Second experiment confirms faster-than-light particles

[Davy]

A second experiment at the European facility that reported subatomic particles zooming faster than the speed of light — stunning the world of physics — has reached the same result, scientists said late Thursday.

The "positive outcome of the [second] test makes us more confident in the result," said Fernando Ferroni, president of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, in a statement released late Thursday. Ferroni is one of 160 physicists involved in the international collaboration known as OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion Tracking Apparatus) that performed the experiment.

While the second experiment "has made an important test of consistency of its result," Ferroni added, "a final word can only be said by brown townogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world."

That is, more tests are needed, and on other experimental setups. There is still a large crowd of skeptical physicists who suspect that the original measurement done in September was an error.

Should the results stand, they would upend more than a century of modern physics.

In the first round of experiments, a massive detector buried in a mountain in Gran Sasso, Italy, recorded neutrinos generated at the CERN particle accelerator on the French-Swiss border arriving 60 nanoseconds sooner than expected. CERN is the French acronym for European Council for Nuclear Research.

A chorus of critiques from physicists soon followed. Among other possible errors, some suggested that the neutrinos generated at CERN were smeared into bunches too wide to measure precisely.

So in recent weeks, the OPERA team tightened the packets of neutrinos that CERN sent sailing toward Italy. Such tightening removed some uncertainty in the neutrinos' speed.

The detector still saw neutrinos moving faster than light.

"One of the eventual systematic errors is now out of the way," said Jacques Martino, director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics in France, in a statement.

But the faster-than-light drama is far from over, Martino added. The OPERA team is discussing more cross-checks, he added, including possibly running a fiber the 454 miles between the sites.

For more than a century, the speed of light has been locked in as the universe's ultimate speed limit. No experiment had seen anything moving faster than light, which zips along at 186,000 miles per second.

Much of modern physics — including Albert Einstein's famous theory of relativity — is built on that ultimate speed limit.

The scientific world stopped and gaped in September when the OPERA team announced it had seen neutrinos moving just a hint faster than light.

"If it's correct, it's phenomenal," said Rob Plunkett, a scientist at Fermilab, the Department of Energy physics laboratory in Illinois, in September. "We'd be looking at a whole new set of rules" for how the universe works.

So now what...? Time Travel?

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[Jairo]

[Caution]

Yay paying attention in Chemistry class about stuff like this.

[Davy]

Blockland Forums, y u no care about scientific breakthrough proving everything we deem true to be wrong????

[Sulfate]

Blockland Forums, y u no care about scientific breakthrough proving everything we deem true to be wrong????

sry busy wit this xDDD

[Davy]

sry busy wit this xDDD

xd indeed

[xxjpxx]

MISTER FUSION

[Titanium]

So now what...? Time Travel?

Technically, yeah.

Think about it.  A star could explode into a supernova at a given point in the universe.  An observer sitting a few hundred thousand miles off could witness the event.  He could then travel a light-year away at faster-than-light speed ahead of the light emitted from the supernova event.  He could stand on the surface of some random planet and observe the same event happening a second time, but know exactly what it looks like and how it will turn out because in actuality the event already happened, but from his perspective, it has not.

I.e., time travel.  stuff like this blows my mind and makes me giddy.

[Planr]

I just can't wait until they develop warp drive :D

Warp theory is definitely more applicable with stuff like this happening

[Jubel]

I thought this was discovered like, last year.

[Morpheus]

[dkamm65]

It's more likely that the distance between Geneva and Italy was miscalculated.

[Riot]

We've made a prick through the skin of the universe.

I just can't wait until they develop warp drive :D

Warp theory is definitely more applicable with stuff like this happening

Warp drives have nothing to do with light travel.

[King Leo]

Interesting. Now all physics-books must be rewritten :P

[Qwepir]

Think about it.  A star could explode into a supernova at a given point in the universe.  An observer sitting a few hundred thousand miles off could witness the event.  He could then travel a light-year away at faster-than-light speed ahead of the light emitted from the supernova event.  He could stand on the surface of some random planet and observe the same event happening a second time, but know exactly what it looks like and how it will turn out because in actuality the event already happened, but from his perspective, it has not.

Except the event has already occurred, regardless. He's not going back in time before the event happened, he's just going far enough away that he can watch it again.