Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern

jason

Seanchaí
Staff member
A meeting at Cern, the world's largest physics lab, has addressed results that suggest subatomic particles have gone faster than the speed of light.
The team has published its work so other scientists can determine if the approach contains any mistakes.
If it does not, one of the pillars of modern science may come tumbling down.
Antonio Ereditato added "words of caution" to his Cern presentation because of the "potentially great impact on physics" of the result.
The speed of light is widely held to be the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.


more BBC News - Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern
 

Bob Franks

Past District Deputy Grand Lecturer
One of the hallmarks of science is that research results must be reproducible to be valid.
A tongue-in-cheek term in medicine to refer to a dubious result is, "A series of one."

S&F
 

Robert Birtch

DeMolay/Freemason
Hey, lets see them reproduce the same experiment and hope they get the same result. I hope they do. I really want the US to be the first in superluminous travel. Let's see China be able to send ships into deep space and back.
 

CoachN

Builder Builder
The error is found in the way they are keeping track of time. They are using satellites. Satellites are in orbit and travel at a different speed. This will introduce extra time into the measurement and make the neutrinos appear to be traveling faster.
 

Gary2112

Troll Stomper
Staff member
The error is found in the way they are keeping track of time. They are using satellites. Satellites are in orbit and travel at a different speed. This will introduce extra time into the measurement and make the neutrinos appear to be traveling faster.
I'm surprised they didn't consider that from the beginning. it seems to be a rather elementary level error. :confused:
 
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