Saturday, September 24, 2011

Faster Than the Speed of Light

Maybe not, but still super cool:
According to Dr. Autiero’s team, neutrinos emanating from a particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, had raced to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy — a distance of 454 miles — about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 25 parts in a million. 
“We cannot explain the observed effect in terms of systematic uncertainties,” Dr. Autiero told the physicists at CERN, the European organization for nuclear research. “Therefore, the measurement indicates a neutrino velocity higher than the speed of light.” 
Dr. Autiero said his group had spent six months trying to explain away the result, but could not do it. Given the stakes for physics, he said, it would not be proper to attempt any sort of theoretical interpretation of the results. “We present to you this discrepancy or anomaly today,” he said.
Holy shit! This stuff just fascinates me. But, of course, this is just an anomaly and we are talking about the laws of physics:
The recent history of physics and astronomy is strewn with reports of suspicious data bumps that might be new particles or new planets and — if true — could change the way we think about the world, but then disappear with more data or critical scrutiny. Most physicists think the same will happen with this finding.
And that's fine. Really, I just love that we - meaning human beings - have built a massive particle collider and are thinking and talking about the mysteries of our universe. It makes me hopeful (not that hopeful given that we're careening towards self-induced economic catastrophe, but still, a little tiny bit hopeful). In my opinion, this is us at our best. So, here's Harvard physics professor Lisa Randall talking about lots of cool, geeky science-y stuff including the significance of the Large Hadron Collider.
Posted by Saphron at 9/24/2011 03:10:00 PM

7 comments:

  1. I was just talking to my berst friend about this. Y'know what I think is really cool? The attitude of the CERN scientists. They're basically saying, "Yeah, we've got something that looks really amazing and we've done our best to figure out where we screwed up but we can't find the mistake. Any of you guys want to show us where we screwed up?"

    What a great field, science, to approach the truth so humbly.

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