CERN Scientists say particles speeding faster than light found
23 Sep 2011
Researchers working in one of the world's largest physics laboratories have uncovered phenomena that could shake the foundations of our understanding of the universe and the concept of time. The speed of light was till now supposed to be the upper limit at which any particle could travel.
But scientists at the Gran Sasso facility in Italy have recorded particles travelling at a speed that is supposedly forbidden by Einstein's theory of special relativity.
They would unveil evidence today that would raise the troubling possibility of a way to send information back in time. This would blur the line between past and present and play havoc with the fundamental principle of cause and effect.
Researchers on the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment recorded the arrival times of subatomic particles called neutrinos that were fired from CERN on a 730km journey through the earth to the Gran Sasso lab.
A beam of light would complete the journey in 2.4 milliseconds, however, after running the experiment for three years with 15,000 neutrions, the scientist found that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso sixty-billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second.
In effect, the scientists found that neutrinos travelled faster than the speed of light by a fraction of 20 parts per million and given the speed of light is 299,792,458 metres per second, the neutrinos were evidently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second.
The results can be replicated in only two labs elsewhere - one being Fermilab outside Chicago and the other in Japan, which is currently on hold due to the tsunami and earthquake. Fermilab officials met yesterday to discuss about verification of the European results and said their particle beam was already up and running. But the measuring systems were not nearly as precise as the Europeans' and upgradation would take some time, according to Fermilab scientist Rob Plunkett.
