I’m no scientist – and my head hurt just reading the article – but this feels like a big discovery, something that could fundamentally change everything we know about time and space. The gist is that scientists at CERN laboratory fired 15,000 beams of neutrinos – tiny particles that pervade the cosmos – over a period of three years and many were recorded travelling faster than the speed of light...
WHAAAAAT?
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.”
This stunning finding could basically overturn one of Einstein’s fundamental laws of the universe.
If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert 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.
And if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible. Right?
Einstein’s theory of special relativity says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, because photons – light particles – have no mass. Proof that neutrinos, mysterious subatomic particles which have a tiny amount of mass, can travel faster would be inconsistent with Einstein’s theory.
Einstein’s theory is critical to the Standard Model of physics that helps explain everything we know about how the universe works, from black holes to the big bang. If it is shown to be flawed, virtually everything in modern physics and the fundamental laws of nature would have to be rethought.
So. Just to be clear:
Everything. You. Know. Is. Wrong.
Carry on.
Read the whole article here, then explain it to me please.
(Photo: Pixabay)
