[meteorite-list] Second experiment confirms faster-than-light particles

From: JoshuaTreeMuseum <joshuatreemuseum_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:11:54 -0500
Message-ID: <4F0F858DA43241819DFB5CEF0898B896_at_ET>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/second-experiment-confirms-faster-than-light-particles/2011/11/17/gIQAlRlTWN_story.html?hpid=z5

Second experiment confirms faster-than-light particles:

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.

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.

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.

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

Phil Whitmer

Joshua Tree Earth & Space Museum

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

The bartender says "we don't serve your kind in here."

A neutrino walks into a bar.
Received on Fri 18 Nov 2011 12:11:54 PM PST