2nd test affirms faster-than-light particles

This picture shows a view of the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus detector (OPERA) at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS) located under the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy, Nov. 14, 2011. / Getty

This story was written by Brian Vastag

A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light -- stunning the world of physics -- has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.

The "positive outcome of the [second] test makes us more confident in the result," said Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement released late Thursday. Ferroni is one of 160 physicists involved in the international collaboration known as OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus) that performed the experiment.

While the second experiment "has made an important test of consistency of its result," Ferroni added, "a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

That is, more tests are needed, and on other experimental setups. There is still a large crowd of skeptical physicists who suspect that the original measurement done in September was an error.

CERN clocks subatomic particles traveling faster than light
Video: Faster-than-light measurement shocks physicists
God Particle riddle could be solved "by 2012"

Should the results stand, they would upend more than a century of modern physics.

In the first round of experiments, a massive detector buried in a mountain in Gran Sasso, Italy, recorded neutrinos generated at the CERN particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border arriving 60 nanoseconds sooner than expected. CERN is the French acronym for European Council for Nuclear Research.

A chorus of critiques from physicists soon followed. Among other possible errors, some suggested that the neutrinos generated at CERN were smeared into bunches too wide to measure precisely.

So in recent weeks, the OPERA team tightened the packets of neutrinos that CERN sent sailing toward Italy. Such tightening removed some uncertainty in the neutrinos' speed.

The detector still saw neutrinos moving faster than light.

"One of the eventual systematic errors is now out of the way," said Jacques Martino, director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics in France, in a statement.

But the faster-than-light drama is far from over, Martino added. The OPERA team is discussing more cross-checks, he added, including possibly running a fiber the 454 miles between the sites.

For more than a century, the speed of light has been locked in as the universe's ultimate speed limit. No experiment had seen anything moving faster than light, which zips along at 186,000 miles per second.

Much of modern physics -- including Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity -- is built on that ultimate speed limit.

Should Einstein be worried?

The scientific world stopped and gaped in September when the OPERA team announced it had seen neutrinos moving just a hint faster than light.

"If it's correct, it's phenomenal," said Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, the Department of Energy physics laboratory in Illinois, in September. "We'd be looking at a whole new set of rules" for how the universe works.

[Workman_Aquarious]

Check out my theory that explains how thus phenomenon / event can occur and Einstein can still be correct. Would post it all here but no reason to regurgitate information.

https://sites.google.com/site/tangentialconceptions/

[ottokrog]

What if the speed of light isn't constant, as some physicists suggested recently?

What if the speed of light varies through time and space?

That would create some interesting theory. At least I think so.

Antimatter is the mind and consciousness of all living entities.

You are your own universe.

Reality is where the minds (antimatter) meets the physical universe.

Interested? Then read my philosophical multiverse theory.

Google crestroyer theory, and find it instantly.

http://crestroyertheory.com/the-theory/

[thinkingonetoo]

HAHA, i've been telling people for years FTL was and is!

[karek40]

We have stars moving away from the theoretical center of the universe at greater than 0.7 the speed of light. The earth is also moving in the opposite direction at greater than 0.7 the speed of light. The light from the star should never reach the earth but it does. The reason, the speed of light was faster just after the big bang. The speed of light has been decaying exponentially since conception. The speed of the neutrinos only confirms that the speed of light has never been a constant it's just on the asymptotic portion of its exponential curve and appears to be approaching a constant value.

[cofl2012]

julianpenrod: "And the fact of the matter is that Einstein has never been "proved" outside the laboratory.."

Do you know what GPS is?
Do you know how it works?
It works only because Einstein's General Relativity works.

[Robin DeArcos]

time is faster then light...it takes time for light to reach its target....light speed 186.000 per sec..time already there.

[SBMobile01]

This finding really proves that physicist don't really know anything about the cosmos! That's why they're resisting these findings! If they prove to be true, everything they know about the universe will be rendered GARBAGE!! Neutrinos moving faster than light shows that we don't really see whats actually going on in universe. It's ALL complete speculation to the point that we'll spend an eternity guessing about space until an alien life form comes along & tells us right from wrong! Science = a BIG guessing-game! There's NO hard facts if you can't go out there & touch it, then analyze it! We're too dumb to figure out how to turn hypothesis & guesstimates into a physical reality! After we figure out these things, an eon or two later, then we'll have to deal with the massive asteroid-field surrounding us between Mars & Jupiter! We'll never navigate or develop a machine that can compute its way through that safely! We're stuck here, no matter what! Cosmology is nothing more than glorified "star-gazing" with a powerful telescope. Everything they see is a guess! We thought Pluto was a planet for decades, now it's not! Everything we believe in is based on the "9" planets in our solar-system. Soon they'll figure out that a lot more of our beliefs are BALONEY, thanks to the "genius" science-community!! No wonder NASA bailed on the program, it was a complete waste of time! If we send people into space, you can "bet" that they'll end-up being stranded out there, by our government! They love to leap before they look! SMH! The human race only moves backwards, while everything else moves forward. Sad!

[myoleman]

"the massive asteroid-field surrounding us between Mars & Jupiter! We'll never navigate or develop a machine that can compute its way through that safely!"
--NASA has already sent space probes to the edges of the Solar system, one o'em came close to Pluto. That's not a problem.

"We thought Pluto was a planet for decades, now it's not!"
--That's just a human definition of the word "planet". Just semantics, human conventions, definitions. Minutae.

"If we send people into space, you can "bet" that they'll end-up being stranded out there, by our government! They love to leap before they look!
--Many people were sent to the Moon and none of them were left stranded out there, ever. One of the reasons robots are sent on long space missions is out of concern for the safety of human beings.
Thanks to our current scientific knowledge there are now computers, cell-phones, all other electronic devices, cures for many deadly diseases etc. The Lord created mankind with the capacity to understand its environment to some extend, so it can help itself to survive and thrive on God's universe. Glory to Lord Jesus!

[Royal_Mountain]

How can someone write something this stupid while using THE INTERNET, a result and collection of humanity knowledge and work on science and physics. Without science you wouldn't have TV, cellphones, computers, most of our modern medical instruments and treatments and transportation means.

[askagain]

scottpatrick1234

I've always known Einstein was not very smart.

-----------------------------------------

That is like suggesting that Benjamin Franklin was not very smart yet Franklin was way ahead of most people in the 1700's, long before things such as radio, TV, computers, and modern education even existed. Nor did Einstein have many of the scientific tools and knowledge available to us today yet he was far ahead of most prople in his lifetime. His Theory of Relativity dates back to 1905. In 1905 many people didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing in their homes. How can you rationally believe that Einsdtein wasn't very smart?

[netjunkie1]

He was a simple file clerk....and he influenced the world

[julianpenrod]

Einstein never said nothihng could move faster than light, the primary tenet of his relativity was that light moved at the same speed no matter how fast an observer was approaching it or receding from it. This was based on a supposed constant value obtained from the Michelson-Morley appartus. Part of the problem with relativity, and naive "science", is the presumption that machines made of matter necessarily reveal the whole truth. How many have been willing to entertain the notion that the "speed of light" measured by devices isn't just a literal optical illusion? The "speed of light" is the inverse of the square root of the product of the electrostatic permittivity of free space and the magnetic permeability of free space, which reasonably are constant no matter what. If a device has those two results somehow buiried in the details of its operation, it would produce the value "the speed of light" no matter what actual rate at which a light wave approached it! If Einstein's relativity is wrong, objects could move faster than light in what's considered "normal" space.
And the fact of the matter is that Einstein has never been "proved" outside the laboratory, where those with an evident vested interest in his being seen as correct are providing all the "results"! And it should also be mentioned that no phenomenon touched on by Einstein wasn't already known! The Doppler shift was already explained years before, Einstein only altered the formula slightly, and "scientists" "verified" his predictions. The bending of starlight by gravity was even predicted years before, and, although Eddington climed to have gotten measurements of stars offset by the sun, records indicate the weather was rainy the day he made his "observations". Even apparent time dilation was known centuries before Einstein! Ole Roemer measured the speed of light through space by comparing the eclipses of Jupiter's moons when Jupiter was on the same side of the sun as earth and when they were on opposite sides. The greater distance sahould cause the occurrence of the eclipse to occur slightly off schedule since the light had to travel the extra distance. But, if it was off schedule, that meant the "clock" represented by the eclipses ran slower when Jupiter was moving away from earth and fatser when they were approaching! And the mass energy equation has nothing to do with atomic bombs. The explosions from fission are caused by electrostatic instability in readioactive nuclei. The mass energy equation is used to explain only a fractional portion of the enerhy "scientists" claim is released!
And, it should be mentioned, few are willing to admit that the MIchelson Morley Experiment still shows regular seasonal variations, as if the earth's movement through space does affect the speed of light registered.

[Older Codger]

I don't know of anyone who could have put it better.
The speed of light is governed by adjacent Mass. Perhaps it may be that, since the Neutrino has a wave function which is less influenced by Mass, it may marginally exceed the speed of a plane polarised Electromagnetic Wave?

[imnho]

There is a mathmatical discontunity at the speed of light. At that speed you wind up divding by zero. Thats wht it is postulated that nothing can accerate faster than light.

Many years go someone postulated that something could have meta mass which wouls solve the problem mathmatically. I have no idea hoe you would physically interept mass written as a complex number