http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tec...1kntb.html

•Finding could overturn laws of physics
•Scientists confident measurements correct

An international team of scientists says it has recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light - a finding that could overturn one of Albert Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, said that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works.

The totally unexpected finding emerged from research by a physicists working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy.

A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos - tiny particles that pervade the cosmos - were fired over a period of 3 years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 730 kilometres away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.

Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds - or 60 billionths of a second - less than light beams would have taken.

"It is a tiny difference," said Ereditato, who also works at Berne University in Switzerland, "but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent."

Ereditato declined to speculate on what it might mean if other physicists, who will be officially informed of the discovery at a meeting in CERN on Friday, found that OPERA's measurements were correct.

"I just don't want to think of the implications," he said. "We are scientists and work with what we know."

Much science-fiction literature is based on the idea that, if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible.

The existence of the neutrino, an elementary sub-atomic particle with a tiny amount of mass created in radioactive decay or in nuclear reactions such as those in the Sun, was first confirmed in 1934, but it still mystifies researchers.

It can pass through most matter undetected, even over long distances, and without being affected. Millions pass through the human body every day, scientists say.

To reach Gran Sasso, the neutrinos pushed out from a special installation at CERN - also home to the Large Hadron Collider probing the origins of the universe - have to pass through water, air and rock.

The underground Italian laboratory, some 120 kilometres to the south of Rome, is the largest of its type in the world for particle physics and cosmic research.

Around 750 scientists from 22 different countries work there, attracted by the possibility of staging experiments in its three massive halls, protected from cosmic rays by some 1400 metres of rock overhead.

Reuters

I remember the last time that someone thought they had detected particles travelling faster than the speed of light, in relation to a very distant exploding star (I think). It turned out to be a natural phenomena not related to going faster than the speed of light, but nevertheless it created a lot of fuss at the time.

Claiming to be on the verge of overturning the known laws and accepted theories of physics does tend to generate interest.

Even in the unlikely event that it turns out, this time, to be an actual case of the cosmological speed limit being broken, it won't make Einstein's laws invalid. Newton's laws are, after all, still studied and still largely valid (most of the time).

Thats not a tiny difference, its 40,000 times faster.!! lets see, 2.4  x 10^-3 / 60 x 10^-9 = 40,000 The time may be small, but the speed increase most certainly is not. If true it means the physics I learnt about speed of light being an absolute is junk.

Very unscientific wording in the article - I can see where you got that figure from micgrace.

But I'm pretty sure that what they meant was that the light got there in 2.4 * 10^-3 seconds and the neutrinos got there 60 nanoseconds faster than that - so ( (2.4 * 10^-3) - (60 * 10^-9) ) seconds. So the inverse of the factor you thought they meant. A tiny amount, but if they broke the speed of light they broke the speed of light.

Except one minor detail, the distance is small so time is also very small. But if true, the speed differential is very large. It equates to a star 40,000 light years being able to be reached in one "neutrino year"??

albert is turning over in his grave

I've thought for a long time that the speed of light being a constant was only because it's the fastest thing we've so far measured.  So now we've found something that, apparently, goes faster.  What staggers me is the idea of measuring time in such tiny, tiny amounts.  I mean, how do they manage that feat?
Alison

Actually it is 39,999 years. The article is badly worded and if you read it literally it does sound as though the neutrino would make it there in one year.

I think a lot of people misunderstand the "cosmic speed limit" and how Einstein felt about that. Einstein came up with a theory (relativity) that was relatively simple, elegant, and explained certain observations that fell outside the known laws of physics at the time. One of the consequences of that theory is that the speed of light should be the upper limit of how fast anything can travel. Einstein himself said that he expected that science would eventually find exceptions to his theory (sorry, I can't find a citation on that, it is just something that I heard many years ago).

What this team of scientists is doing is setting out to see if they can break the unbreakable. They are trying to do to Einstein's theory exactly what Einstein did to Newton's laws. They may find some very interesting stuff along the way.

There was a young lady named Bright
Who could travel much faster than light
She set off one day, in a relative way
And arrived home the previous night.

Alison

Einstein could still be right but it would mean these particals are negative in mass if thats possable

Most specialists in this field are very doubtful that the reported experimental results will hold up.

They are saying that these kind of measurements involving neutrinos are extremely difficult to make. Many of them suspect that the analysis of the experiment will eventually be found to have misjudged the accuracy of the distance measurements.

While Einstein is surely capable of error, Einstein's theories have been extremely well validated and it would take quite a few consistently repeatable experiments to begin to dent the confidence that has been established in his theories.

are you people forgetting about the warp factor

The warp factor (I assume that you are talking about how time and space are warped by gravity and velocity) is an integral part of Einstein's general theory of relativity. It isn't something you can easily forget. That is about as far as my layman's knowledge extends - our resident quantum physicist (mdsheppeard) would have some interesting insights on this, I'm sure.

I'm no physicist (at all, I even find it hard to spell!) but from what I've read about this, the beam of neutrinos was sent underground, in what amounts to a straight line, point A to point B?  Whereas the measurement of the distance would be on the surface of the earth.  Would it be that the particles actually didn't go any faster than the speed of light, but just had a slightly shorter distance to travel (straight line as opposed to curvature at the surface)?  Would that have skewed the measurements, at all, or was this something that was taken into consideration, and I'm just being my usual dunce re physics?
Alison

hey alison......nasa scientists once missed mars with a capsule because they forgot to convert kms to miles.  gazillions of dollars and so much design time gone, as the device sailed right by mars.  

maybe in 10,000,000 years some alien (to us) civilization will pick it up and laugh at the backward beings that assembled such a thing.

physics is a mystery to me, especially after years of study.

louie the wonder dog and i travel to the countryside and sit under trees and watch the horses and cows graze on the hillsides. i have been dead four times and have come to realize the fractal structure of leaves is all that is necessary to comprehend.  the movement of the animals is all you need to know about speed.  i seem to have a much better understanding of the underlying nature of all things since being reborn.

that, or i'm full of ****.