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Is It a Bird? Is It a Plane?
Sep. 25th, 2011 12:45 pmNo it is a neutrino flying from Geneva to Gran Sasso...faster than light.
A symposium held on Friday afternoon in Geneva announced sensational data, the Italian physicist Antonio Ereditato, the leader of the team responsible for the experiment declared that 'the fact is so surprising that at the moment everybody should be very cautious, and' he added ' I don't even want to think about the implications'.
The discovery is an handbook case of serendipity. The team was conducting experiments involving neutrino beams and a beam emitted from the CERN labs in Geneva was expected to reach the lab under Mount Gran Sasso (732 kms away) in 2.4 thousandths of a second, but it arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than that .
The first thought was 'error'. The experiment has been repeated over and over again (3 years have passed from the first measured occurrence, and 15000 neutrino beams have been analized) and on Friday the official conclusion has been stated: the speed of light has been exceeded.
The scientific community is very, very cautious, many other experiments and studies will be needed, but at a theoretical level the implications of this discovery may be staggering.
Source: Italian newspaper Avvenire september the 24th 2011
and something in English
A symposium held on Friday afternoon in Geneva announced sensational data, the Italian physicist Antonio Ereditato, the leader of the team responsible for the experiment declared that 'the fact is so surprising that at the moment everybody should be very cautious, and' he added ' I don't even want to think about the implications'.
The discovery is an handbook case of serendipity. The team was conducting experiments involving neutrino beams and a beam emitted from the CERN labs in Geneva was expected to reach the lab under Mount Gran Sasso (732 kms away) in 2.4 thousandths of a second, but it arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than that .
The first thought was 'error'. The experiment has been repeated over and over again (3 years have passed from the first measured occurrence, and 15000 neutrino beams have been analized) and on Friday the official conclusion has been stated: the speed of light has been exceeded.
The scientific community is very, very cautious, many other experiments and studies will be needed, but at a theoretical level the implications of this discovery may be staggering.
Source: Italian newspaper Avvenire september the 24th 2011
and something in English
