A computer simulation depicts a solar neutrino event at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada. Neutrinos are odd particles that stream from space and the Sun, now scientists at CERN believe they may have clocked the weird particles at faster than light speeds - which is meant to be impossible.
PARIS: In breaking news, physicists reported Thursday that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light, a finding that - if verified - would blast a hole in Einstein's theory of relativity.
In experiments conducted between the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and a laboratory in Italy, the tiny particles arrived at their final destination 60 nanoseconds earlier than light travelling the same distance, the researchers said.
"This result comes as a complete surprise," said physicist Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the experiment, known as OPERA. "We wanted to measure the speed of neutrinos, but we didn't expect to find anything special."
Scientists spent nearly six months "checking, testing, controlling and rechecking everything" before making an announcement, he said.
Researchers involved in the experiments were cautious in describing its implications, and called on physicists around the world to scrutinise their data, to be made available online overnight.
But the findings, they said, could potentially reshape our understanding of the physical world.
"If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics," said CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci, a view echoed by several independent physicists.
In the experiments, scientists blasted a beam producing billions upon billions of neutrinos from CERN, which straddles the French-Swiss border near Geneva, to the Gran Sasso Laboratory 730 kilometres away in Italy.
Neutrinos are electrically neutral particles so small that only recently were they found to have mass.
Hugely abundant but hard to detect, these "ghost particles" are a by-product of nuclear fusion from stars, such as the Sun.
"The neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier that the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light," said Ereditato, adding that the margin or error was less than 10 nanoseconds.
Under Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity, however, a physical object cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
The fact that the neutrinos were moving through matter - including a slice of Earth's crust - could not have caused them to accelerate, said French physicist Pierre Binetruy, who was not involved in the experiment but has reviewed the data.
"It might have slowed them down, but it certainly didn't make them go faster than the speed of light," he told journalists in Paris Thursday night.
Binetruy described the results "altogether revolutionary," and said they will, if backed up, force physicists to go back to the blackboard.
"The theory of general relativity, the theory of special relativity - both are called into question," he said.
Alfons Weber, a neutrino expert who participated in a similar experiment in 2007 at the US Fermilab, agreed that the faster-than-light neutrinos could not be reconciled with current theories, but said the results needed to be duplicated elsewhere.
"There is still the possibility of a measurement error," he said by phone. "It would be too exciting to be true. That's why I'm cautious."
The earlier test, conducted over the same distance, also gave a slight edge to neutrinos in the race against light, but the results were within the experiment's margin of error, said Weber, a professor of particle physics at Oxford University.
The CERN announcement was likely to prompt another round of more accurate tests in the US, he added.
Even if verified, however, the new findings would not entirely invalidate Einstein's brilliant insights, which have held sway for more than a century.
"The theory of special relativity will still be a good theory if you apply it where it is valid, but there will have to be some extensions or modifications," he said.
Newton's theory of gravity, he noted, still explains the movement of planets well enough to send missions into space, even if Einstein's theories proved that it was not quite correct.
Theoretical physicists are sure to begin searching for new explanations to account for the unsuspected quickness of neutrinos.
It could be that "the particles have found a shortcut in another dimension" besides the four - three in space, plus time - we know about, Binetruy ventured.
"Or it could simply mean that the speed of light is not the speed limit we thought it was."
Response to Dr. Ereditato on breaking speed-of-light
See full letter at: http://www.3d-computing.com/pb/bbc_news_breaking_speed-of-light.pdf
Dear Antonio Ereditato,
I am taking you up on your appeal for scrutiny of the results from the OPERA experiment that you made public at a BBC News interview on September 22nd, 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484) :
“we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result – because it is crazy”.
When I heard your name on TV, in newspapers, etc. I was reminded of, and hopefully you will recall, the several dinners and gatherings over several years we shared at CERN 30 years ago with Luciano Ramello, Tiziano Camporesi, Mario Caria, Vittorio Remondino, etc. when I was working at CERN on the trigger of the Delphi experiment.
Here is my scrutiny of the results of your experiment.
I will first summarize what you stated - that you measured the time it took for a neutrino beam to travel a distance of 732 Km, and it took 60 nanoseconds less time than it would have taken a light beam to travel the same distance.
After trying and failing to find any errors you stated:
“We wanted to find a mistake –trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn’t. When you don’t find anything, then you say ‘well, now I’m forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this‘. ”
The most logical step to have taken the first time you found this “crazy” result three years ago would have been to plan a specific low cost experiment that would clarify this discrepancy. Instead, you kept doing and redoing the same experiment for three years acquiring “travel times of neutrino bunches some 16,000 times”! Remember Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
You needed to clarify the discrepancy of a Time of Flight (TOF) measurement of 60 nanoseconds (equivalent to 60,000 picoseconds) over a total duration of 2.43 milliseconds.
There exist thousands of articles describing apparatus (detectors and electronics) that can make accurate TOF measurement with a resolution as precise as 10 picoseconds (or even 6 picoseconds as presented some time ago at a workshop at Stanford Linear Accelerator –SLAC-).
So this is what I would have done three years ago:
Since the discrepancy you found is so big, you do not need the neutrino to travel 732 Km in order to see this discrepancy. Using simple proportions traveling just 3.2 Km distance should give you a difference of about 260 picoseconds which is 26 times greater than the 10 picoseconds resolution step of your measuring apparatus.
Remember Galileo’s simple experiment of taking two stones of different weights and dropping them at the same instant from the leaning tower of Pisa and then verifying that they reached the ground at the same time.
Now, send two beams in burst of bunches (these can be sent separately, but simultaneously and repetitively will facilitate viewing the minimum differences in real-time), one light and one neutrino in the underground 3.2 Km SLAC tunnel (or take two LHC experiment sites A and B at CERN of approximately 5 to 7 Km distance from each other, send neutrino bunches underground and send light bunches between 2 towers above ground from site A to site B); build two identical electronic channel circuits (or purchase off-the-shelf components) with a time resolution of 10 picoseconds (or 6 picoseconds) to measure the traveling time of the two beams; within the detector, use the same transducer (if possible) to convert light into electrical signals (e.g. Photek PMT240 or fast SiPM from Hamamatsu or STMicroelectronics); then SWAP THE TWO ELECTRONIC CHANNEL CIRCUITS and repeat the experiment on the two burst of bunches to make sure that the neutrino beam (as well as the light beam) has the same speed regardless of which electronic channel is used (otherwise the fault would lie in the measuring device). By synchronizing the start of the burst of bunches, at the arrival point you would be able to see in real time with a fast oscilloscope the minimum difference on travel time between the two beams (just like two cars racing).
If the discrepancy (neutrino bunches arriving faster than the light bunches) still persists, then you should be confident of having done a diligent accurate experiment and others should be able to obtain the same results.
The reason for measuring the speed of the light beam as well as the neutrino beam is not because it is necessary to measure one more time the speed of light which has been measured thousands of times, but the goal is to test the accuracy or your electronics (achieved by swapping electronic channel circuits), with the speed of light as your source of calibration or reference. Believe me, it was not trivial for me to design DUT (Device Under Test) boards at the Superconducting Super Collider in 1992 for the HP8200 half-million dollar test station of integrated circuits with a time resolution accuracy of 50 picoseconds at all pins of the device under test. I was certain that my design and circuit implementation were correct only by comparing signals.
In scientific research it is necessary to master calculations that will predict specific results. It is necessary to master how to conduct an experiment, to master the knowledge of electronics, detectors, and all components that will be used in the experiment. It is necessary to know the expected results, reproducible by different instrumentation (swapping electronic channel circuits), and ultimately confirm or reject calculations. Only then is money not wasted, experiments can confirm calculations, and the door to progress is opened. Here it looks like nothing has been mastered because the discrepancy is not explained with calculations, it is not explained from the results of the experiment, and it is just called “crazy results.” Results from untested performance of the measuring instrumentation (achievable by swapping electronic channel circuits that measure two parameters), risks alarming many people, discredits scientific research and wastes a lot of newspaper ink and TV time.
Have you calculated how much money you and your collaborators have spent these past three years on conducting inconclusive tests instead of comparing in a scientific way the speed of two beams?
There would be no need to mention the word “crazy” after having conducted this scientific procedure.
In research it is important to discuss, identify, and implement scientific procedures that allow the laws of nature to be understood. A dialogue is key to identifying the most cost effective scientific procedure that will yield the most accurate results.
I hope this example of a scientific procedure to check if neutrino breaks the speed of light helps.
Best regards,
Dario Crosetto
900 Hideaway Pl.
DeSoto, TX, 75115 – USA
Email: crosetto@att.net or info@3d-computing.com
Link to the BBC NEWS: “Speed-of-light results under scrutiny at Cern”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15017484
The speed of light
The official speed of light is specified as "the speed of light in a vacuum". The earth is not a vacuum.
A better apples to apples comparison would be to shoot neutrinos from the space station or the moon toward the target detectors buried in the earth, where the vast majority of the particle travel takes place in space. It may also be possible to simulate such a setup on a smaller scale.
Mickey Thompson
Spokane Washington
speed of light broken the speed of light
i think that speed of light is not constant when travel by strongest electromagnetic fields-noncommutative spacetime topology,that implies several values to the same spacetime continuos,but is divergent when the value of speed of light by the existence of a new dimension of time to the three of spa.
the asymmetry explain the non-causality between some events.because the spscetime is not all symetryc as left-right handed rotatiions systems into one to the other,then have two spins non aymmetrics,and therefore
the transformations of spins if gives by 720 degrees qith timr divided in two.
the superluminal signals are reals without causality,because the neutrinos-antineutrinos spins are asymmetrics.
OPERAtic conCERN
-- James Ph. Kotsybar
Oh, little neutral one of tiny mass,
who flies anomolously from the sun,
you zip through matter photons cannot pass:
Could this explain the races you have won?
From Einstein, few believe that it could be
that any mass can go as fast as light --
it’s deemed complete impossibility,
assuming Relativity is right.
If proved, the implications (terrible)
will give complacent physicists a scare.
In terms that twist the ancient parable,
it’s you that’s tortoise; the photon’s the hare.
It seems, though steady, light can’t keep up pace.
You oscillate, and yet you win the race.