The world as we know it is on the brink of disintegration, on the verge of dissolution. No, I'm not talking about the collapse of the euro, of international finance, or the Western economies. I am talking about something far more important. Which is why it only made the back pages of your newspaper, if it made it at all. Scientists at CERN (the European high-energy physics consortium) have announced the discovery of a particle that can travel faster than light.
Neutrinos fired 454 miles from a supercollider outside Geneva to an underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, took less time (60 nanoseconds less) than light to get there. Or so the physicists think. Or so they measured. Or so they have concluded after checking for every possible artifact and experimental error.
The implications of such a discovery are so mindboggling, however, that these same scientists immediately requested that other labs around the world try to replicate the experiment. Something must have been wrong to account for a result that, if we know anything about the universe, is impossible.
And that's the problem. It has to be impossible because, if not, everything we know about the universe iswrong.
The fundamental axiom of Einstein's theory of relativity is the absolute prohibition on speed faster than light. Einstein's predictions about how time slows and mass increases as one approaches the speed of light have been verified by a mountain of experimental evidence. As velocity increases, mass approaches infinity and time slows to zero, making it progressively and, ultimately, infinitely difficult to achieve light speed. Which is why nothing does. And nothing ever has.
Until two weeks ago.
That's when the results were announced. To oversimplify grossly: If the Gran Sasso scientists had a plate to record the arrival of the neutrinos and a super-powerful telescope to peer (through the Alps!) directly into the lab in Geneva from which they were being fired, the Gran Sasso guys would have "heard" the neutrinos clanging against the plate before they observed the Geneva guys squeeze the trigger on the neutrino gun.
Sixty nanoseconds before, to be precise. Wrap your mind around that one.
From The Detroit News:
http://detnews.com/article/20111011...stions-on-structure-of-universe#ixzz1aUJZI1rC
