Conley
02-23-2012, 10:43 AM
What might have been the biggest physics story of the past century may instead be down to a faulty connection.
In September 2011, the Opera experiment reported it had seen particles called neutrinos evidently travelling faster than the speed of light.
The team has now found two problems that may have affected their test in opposing ways: one in its timing gear and one in an optical fibre connection.
More tests from May will determine just how they affect measured speeds.
The Opera collaboration (an acronym for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus) was initially started to study the tiny particles as they travelled through 730km of rock between a particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland and the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy.
Its goal was to quantify how often the neutrinos change from one type to another on the journey.
But during the course of the experiments the team found that the neutrinos showed up 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have done over the same distance - a result that runs counter to a century's worth of theoretical and experimental physics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635
Very disappointing...they couldn't have checked this out thoroughly before releasing the results to the world? Just another example that science is hardly as precise as some would have you believe.
In September 2011, the Opera experiment reported it had seen particles called neutrinos evidently travelling faster than the speed of light.
The team has now found two problems that may have affected their test in opposing ways: one in its timing gear and one in an optical fibre connection.
More tests from May will determine just how they affect measured speeds.
The Opera collaboration (an acronym for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Racking Apparatus) was initially started to study the tiny particles as they travelled through 730km of rock between a particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Switzerland and the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy.
Its goal was to quantify how often the neutrinos change from one type to another on the journey.
But during the course of the experiments the team found that the neutrinos showed up 60 billionths of a second faster than light would have done over the same distance - a result that runs counter to a century's worth of theoretical and experimental physics.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17139635
Very disappointing...they couldn't have checked this out thoroughly before releasing the results to the world? Just another example that science is hardly as precise as some would have you believe.