The results of an experiment which threw into question the fundamental principles of modern physics may have been produced by a technical flaw.
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Researchers at the Cern physics research centre just outside Geneva announced in September that they appeared to have discovered neutrinos travelling faster than light – an impossibility in Einstein’s theories which govern current understanding of the laws of physics.
But a Cern spokesman said on Wednesday that a bad connection had been discovered between the GPS system and the computer used in the experiment, and that this could account for the astonishing findings.
He said further measurements will be taken later this year to determine whether this was the case.
In the experiment, neutrinos beamed from Cern through water, rock and air to an underground research laboratory in Italy 730 kilometres away were measured as arriving 60 billionths of a second before they should have.
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New tests corroborate light speed problem
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Scientists working on the OPERA experiment at the Geneva headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) said on Friday they had used a new type of proton beam to propel neutrinos through the earth’s crust to a laboratory in Italy 730 kilometres away. “With this new type of beam produced by Cern’s particle…
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The findings are such, challenging Albert Einstein himself, that the scientists working out of the Geneva headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) have called on colleagues to help confirm or refute their data. In his famous special theory of relativity, Einstein postulated that nothing can travel faster than light, which has a…
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Some 150 international experts, government officials and directors of major research centres gathered at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the particle-physics laboratory which houses the smasher, for a four-day seminar that ended on Thursday. According to the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), which organised the event, the science of particle physics “has…
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