The recent results from CERN (the acronym for the original name for the outfit, Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) about neutrinos being propagated faster than light speed has caught a lot of attention. I am still not convinced that the data are correct, but 15,000 individual measurements at the high certainty that is claimed certainly gets one’s attention.
I am not prepared to say whether or not these results are valid as of yet. The folks at CERN are begging other laboratories with comparable apparatus and expertise to verify (or to refute) the findings. That is how science is supposed to work!
However, 15,000 individual determinations are a LOT of data! Let us for the moment take the data at face value and assume that this is not a fluke nor a mistake, but an actual “violation” of the Special Theory of Relativity that indicates that no massive particle can exceed the speed of light, henceforth called c. Ready to do some thought experiments? I am! Let us go!
Recent Comments