Ok well I'll come out the closet - I'm spending the last year of my Physics Masters degree at CERN and I've been in Switzerland for two weeks now. This caught my attention so I actually went to the seminar on it yesterday afternoon. The room was packed full, lots of people with cameras (mainly scientists) and lots of loud applause and questions at the end.
Before I attempt any sort of answers to any comments be warned that although I'm at CERN don't take me as some expert. I'm spending the last year of my undergraduate degree here, which basically makes me the least qualified person here (the only qualifications I've completed officially so far are A Levels
). Also, I'm writing this at 3am so bear with me!
I think that it would have to be tested numerous times though before any real conclusions can be drawn.
This is the key really. You won't find many people rewriting the laws of Physics before at least one/two independent experiments get the same result. There has been a couple of previous experiments (in particular one by MINOS and one based on neutrinos from a Supernova) that did not find neutrinos travelling faster than light, or at least couldn't claim that when the error in their experiments is taken into account (I think MINOS found a neutrino speed above the speed of light but the error in their result meant it still could be less).
They've been testing for 3 years apparently, so they must be fairly confident to put it out for peer review.
Yep, they've made it public because it's got to the point where they've gone through and checked everything multiple times so they're looking for suggestions from the scientific community to see whether someone can find a flaw/error in their method/results.
I have no basis for wondering this, but it always seemed a bit easy saying nothing coould travel faster than light, when we have always used light to investigate... If something is faster than light, you can't see it using light?
Not quite, that's a bit like saying you couldn't measure the speed of a car because you can't run as fast as it. The experiment is just measuring the time taken for the neutrinos to travel a large distance, nothing needs to be moving faster than the speed of light. It's basically just the equivalent of you tellling a friend a mile away to sound a foghorn at 12pm and then you measuring the time you heard it. I'm not sure this will satisfy you so feel free to probe me more...
The fact that the discrepancy in the rule is measured in billionths points to un discovered flaws in the measuring system or some other process
If the relativity law was incorrect with regards to sub atomic particles why wouldn't they be twice or ten times faster than light?
The difference is small like you say, but the error in their measurements is smaller. From memory I think the neutrinos arrive 6 billionths of a second earlier than expected, with an error of +/- 1 billionth of a second, so at worst within this measurement the neutrinos are 4 billionths of a second 'faster' than expected. It's also measured to the six sigma level, which (from memory again...) means there is only around a 1 in 500 million chance that this effect is just down to chance (just a fluke). These may not be the correct numbers exactly, but the reasoning is the same - a small difference but a difference nevertheless.
Your second question is something that physicists will probably be spending the next few decades figuring out if this measurements proves to be correct. I suspect the explanation would come from a complicated new treatment of neutrinos or extra dimensions or something, rather than a reformation of the whole of Physics that would result from removing the 'natural speed limit' that is the speed of light.
Has anyone attempted reading the
report ?
I haven't tried myself, I might do if I get some free time, but I didn't really understand any of the talk yesterday either
, so don't feel too bad!!
I'll leave it at that for now - I am happy to try my bit at answering any more questions etc. though (once I've had sleep). Basically the impression I got from the talk was that they've been very thorough in their work so I definitely don't think it's just a load of hype. Having said that the general consensus seems to be that they've made an innocent mistake or haven't taken into account some effect that would account for the discrepancy, and it's just a matter of time before someone finds it.
If the Higgs Boson isn't found within a year or so that will also create a lot of head scratching.
EDIT: Actually, just a quick point. CERN (the neutrino source) seems to be getting a lot of credit for this, but I'm pretty the bulk of the analysis was done by physicists at Gran Sasso laboratory (the neutrino arrival point). Even more worrying is that I've seen articles that link it to the LHC when in fact the LHC has basically nothing to do with it at all. The neutrinos are accelerated by a differenct particle accelerator at CERN - the SPS (Super Proton Synchrotron). This is also used to inject protons into the LHC but that's where the LHC link ends.