Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) say they have measured tiny subatomic particles traveling faster than light. The difference in speeds is tiny – some 60 billionths of a second over a distance of 454 miles. Even so, if other labs can reproduce the effect, physicists envision one of two far-reaching outcomes.
In one, the CERN team's results could bolster quantum theories of gravity – the last of nature's four fundamental forces scientists are trying to fit under the umbrella of quantum physics. Theories of quantum gravity suggest that at sufficiently high energies, particles can appear to travel faster than light because they traverse extra dimensions of space. The particles involved are neutrinos, fiendishly difficult to work with because they rarely interact with matter. Thus particle accelerators must produce them in vast quantities in order to spot rare interactions with detectors when they do occur. They come in three types, and the experiment the team was running – dubbed OPERA – was designed to track neutrinos as they morph from one type to another as they travel.
The team generated beams of neutrinos at CERN, which straddles the French-Swiss border. They aimed the beams at detectors in a cavern at Gran Sasso, Italy, some 450 miles away. With a set of detectors at CERN, and another at Gran Sasso, the team was measuring the neutrinos' travel time between the two. That's when the discrepancy began to emerge.
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