Neutrinos: FTL or FTL?

[blindinglights]

Has Einstein's Speed Limit Been Broken:

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Scientists at the CERN laboratory in the Franco-Swiss border shot neutrinos a distance of 730 km to Italy's INFN Gran Sasso laboratory and measured their speed to be 20 parts per million faster than the speed of light. The experiment took three years to complete and sent over 15,000 neutrinos to travel underground between the two laboratories.

The surprising findings of this Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) experiment cannot be attributed to a faulty experimental design; scientists have noted that the experiment was performed with extreme precision and statistical accuracy. The error reported was also incredibly small — an uncertainty of a mere 20 cm over the 730 km range that the neutrinos travelled.

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Neutrinos can potentially be the first-ever particles to have surpassed the speed of light. The validity of the experiment cannot be confirmed until it is replicated elsewhere. If the results do hold, neutrinos may suggest the existence of extra dimensions.

"Physicists have been considering the possibility of extra dimensions for many years," wrote Blumenfeld, "If, somehow, the neutrinos take a little short-cut through an extra dimension that's one possibility."

Not so fast, say theoretical physicists:

I've just about had enough of you in frogs and ities! Let's give these nancys a ing good kickin.

Whoops, wrong quote. Here we go:

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In a terse, peremptory-sounding paper posted online on September 29, Andrew Cohen and Sheldon Glashow of Boston University calculate that any neutrinos traveling faster than light would radiate energy away, leaving a wake of slower particles analogous to the sonic boom of a supersonic fighter jet. Their findings cast doubt on the veracity of measurements recently announced at CERN (and posted online here) that clocked neutrinos going a sliver faster than light.

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[Clak]

The key is whether or not others can replicate the results.

 

[depascal22]

Neutrinos always weirded me out. Particles without mass that can pass through anything but don't have the harmful effects of X-Rays? Yeesh. Next thing you're going to tell me that we need $2 billion to study them.