Physicists reported on Thursday that sub-atomic particles called neutrinos can travel faster than light, a finding that — if verified — would blast a hole in Einstein’s theory of relativity.
In experiments conducted between the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland and a laboratory in Italy, the tiny particles were clocked at 300,006 kilometers per second, about six kilometers per secon, faster that the speed of light, the researchers said.
“This result comes as a complete surprise,” said physicist Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the experiment, known as OPERA. “We wanted to measure the speed of neutrinos, but we didn’t expect to find anything special.”
Scientists spent nearly six months “checking, testing, controlling and rechecking everything” before making an announcement, he said.
Researchers involved in the experiments were cautious in describing its implications, and called on physicists around the world to scrutinize their data, to be made available online overnight.
However, the findings, they said, could potentially reshape our understanding of the physical world.
“If this measurement is confirmed, it might change our view of physics,” CERN research director Sergio Bertolucci said, a view echoed by several independent physicists.
In the experiments, scientists blasted a beam producing billions upon billions of neutrinos from CERN, which straddles the French-Swiss border near Geneva, to the Gran Sasso Laboratory 730km away in Italy.
Neutrinos are electrically neutral particles so small that only recently were they found to have mass. Hugely abundant, but hard to detect, these “ghost particles” are a by-product of nuclear fusion from stars, such as the sun.
“The neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier that the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light,” Ereditato said, adding that the margin or error was less than 10 nanoseconds.
However, under Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, a physical object cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. That the neutrinos were moving through matter — including a slice of Earth’s crust — could not have caused them to accelerate, said French physicist Pierre Binetruy, who was not involved in the experiment but has reviewed the data.
“It might have slowed them down, but it certainly didn’t make them go faster than the speed of light,” he told journalists in Paris on Thursday night.
Binetruy described the results as “altogether revolutionary,” and said they would, if backed up, force physicists to go back to the drawingboard.
“The theory of general relativity, the theory of special relativity — both are called into question,” he said.
Alfons Weber, a neutrino expert who participated in a similar experiment in 2007 at the US Fermilab, agreed that the faster-than-light neutrinos could not be reconciled with current theories, but said the results needed to be duplicated elsewhere.
“There is still the possibility of a measurement error,” he said by telephone. “It would be too exciting to be true. That’s why I’m cautious.”
The earlier test, conducted over the same distance also gave a slight edge to neutrinos in the race against light, but the results were within the experiment’s margin of error, said Weber, a professor of particle physics at Oxford University.
The CERN announcement was likely to prompt another round of more accurate tests in the US, he added.
Even if verified, however, the new findings would not entirely invalidate Einstein’s brilliant -insights, which have held sway for more than a century.
“The theory of special relativity will still be a good theory if you apply it where it is valid, but there will have to be some extensions or modifications,” he said.
Newton’s theory of gravity, he said, still explains the movement of planets well enough to send missions into space, even if Einstein’s theories proved that it was not quite correct.
Theoretical physicists are sure to begin searching for new explanations to account for the unsuspected quickness of neutrinos.
It could be that “the particles have found a shortcut in another dimension” besides the four — three in space, plus time — we know about, Binetruy ventured. “Or it could simply mean that the speed of light is not the speed limit we thought it was.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including