A team of international researchers said Thursday that they have discovered particles that appear to move faster than the speed of light.
A team of researchers shot neutrinos over a period of three years from the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland to detectors at Gran Sasso 500 miles away, according to a Reuters report filed Thursday.
Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, according to the researchers. But the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds -- or 60 billionths of a second -- less than the time that light would require to travel the same distance. To reach Gran Sasso, the neutrinos had to pass through water, air and rock, Reuters reported.
"I just don't want to think of the implications," Antonio Ereditato, the spokesman for the research effort, told Reuters. "We are scientists and work with what we know."
Ereditato led a team of researchers known as Opera, which was a combined team from both CERN as well as the Gran Sasso facility in Italy. The team will provide its official results on Friday, where they ask other researchers to double-check their results.
CERN, of course, was most commonly known for its Large Hadron Collider, which began smashing particles together in 2010. At the time, conspiracy theorists worried that the the world's biggest machine, which slammed beams of particles together at a record collision energy of 7 tera-electron volts (TeV) or 7 million million electron volts - would potentially destroy the world.
Albert Einstein's famous equation, e=mc^2, established light's speed, 186,000 miles per second as the upper boundary for velocity. It also established light's speed as a "cosmic constant," as Reuters noted.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,239…
Neutrino particle traveling faster than light? Two ways it could rewrite physics. European scientists are shocked by an experiment that showed neutrino particles moving faster than light. The result, if confirmed, could challenge Einstein's signature theory on relativity or point to a universe of more than four dimensions.
A team of researchers shot neutrinos over a period of three years from the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland to detectors at Gran Sasso 500 miles away, according to a Reuters report filed Thursday.
Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, according to the researchers. But the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds -- or 60 billionths of a second -- less than the time that light would require to travel the same distance. To reach Gran Sasso, the neutrinos had to pass through water, air and rock, Reuters reported.
"I just don't want to think of the implications," Antonio Ereditato, the spokesman for the research effort, told Reuters. "We are scientists and work with what we know."
Ereditato led a team of researchers known as Opera, which was a combined team from both CERN as well as the Gran Sasso facility in Italy. The team will provide its official results on Friday, where they ask other researchers to double-check their results.
CERN, of course, was most commonly known for its Large Hadron Collider, which began smashing particles together in 2010. At the time, conspiracy theorists worried that the the world's biggest machine, which slammed beams of particles together at a record collision energy of 7 tera-electron volts (TeV) or 7 million million electron volts - would potentially destroy the world.
Albert Einstein's famous equation, e=mc^2, established light's speed, 186,000 miles per second as the upper boundary for velocity. It also established light's speed as a "cosmic constant," as Reuters noted.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,239…
Neutrino particle traveling faster than light? Two ways it could rewrite physics. European scientists are shocked by an experiment that showed neutrino particles moving faster than light. The result, if confirmed, could challenge Einstein's signature theory on relativity or point to a universe of more than four dimensions.
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