faster than the speed of light?
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-09-cern-faster-than-light-particle.html
I came across this article online today and I figured would be a perfect discussion starter, and perhaps an even better blog post! Anyway, this past Friday, it was announced that a neutrino beam traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light, with an error of 10 nanoseconds. We realize that traveling faster than the speed of light just isn’t supposed to happen. The question now is, were there flaws in the measurements of this laboratory, or are there even more mysteries of the universe than we had once thought? Although scientists have spent months going over there calculations and checking their measurements, the tests will have to be performed by other labs before it can be considered more seriously. The work of Albert Einstein is in question at the moment. If Einstein’s theory of relativity is proven wrong because of this, there will be major chaos in the information we know about the universe at the moment. Even if scientists do prove his theory wrong with these neutrinos, we know the equation E=mc2 works with so many other things in the universe. It is my opinion that whatever comes out of this will face much scrutiny by many different types of people. Just as many theories have been criticized in their beginnings, it will be interesting to see how this plays out if it is found to be true that the particles travel faster than light. All in all, wouldn’t it be interesting to live through a rewrite of our physics books? It will take a great deal of testing and persuasion before this has even the slightest chance of happening, but it will be exciting to watch the scientists try and explain this one.
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