CERN claims faster-than-light particle measured

[Take Your Lumps]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

GENEVA (AP) -- A fundamental pillar of physics - that nothing can go faster than the speed of light - appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories.

Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity - the famous E (equals) mc2 equation - just doesn't happen.

"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside the Swiss city of Geneva.

Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery.

"They are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've done and really scrutinize it in great detail, and ideally for someone elsewhere in the world to repeat the measurements," he said Thursday.

Scientists at the competing Fermilab in Chicago have promised to start such work immediately.

"It's a shock," said Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke, who was not part of the research in Geneva. "It's going to cause us problems, no doubt about that - if it's true."

The Chicago team had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but those came with a giant margin of error that undercut its scientific significance.

Outside scientists expressed skepticism at CERN's claim that the neutrinos - one of the strangest well-known particles in physics - were observed smashing past the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second).

University of Maryland physics department chairman Drew Baden called it "a flying carpet," something that was too fantastic to be believable.

CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormous implications of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there was no flaws in the experiment.

"We have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement," said Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, who was involved in the experiment known as OPERA.

The CERN researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results.

A similar neutrino experiment at Fermilab near Chicago would be capable of running the tests, said Stavros Katsanevas, the deputy director of France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research. The institute collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory for the experiment at CERN.

Katsanevas said help could also come from the T2K experiment in Japan, though that is currently on hold after the country's devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of nature.

Einstein's special relativity theory that says energy equals mass times the speed of light squared underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly up until now."

He cautioned that the neutrino researchers would have to explain why similar results weren't detected before, such as when an exploding star - or supernova - was observed in 1987.

"This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to treat it extremely carefully," said Ellis.

[Bladers]

Another Day, But Same old Story: Another Scientific Theory found to be false.

[Godzuki]

i hope its true so we have to rethink everything. things were getting pretty boring with us maxing out at the speed of light

[boozehound]

Another Day, But Same old Story: Another Scientific Theory found to be false.

gotta love this dude. thats the whole point of the scientific method, you fool. Its falsifiable. Meaning that our current understanding can always be improved upon/ revised based on new evidence.


and lets hold off on throwing out a pretty useful tool of energy and matter based on one set of experiments.

[Nick Young]

Yep, once again another thing that science considered an absolute law, that nothing is faster than light has been shattered. I wonder why idiots still continue to have blind belief in science.

[Nick Young]

gotta love this dude. thats the whole point of the scientific method, you fool. Its falsifiable. Meaning that our current understanding can always be improved upon/ revised based on new evidence.


and lets hold off on throwing out a pretty useful tool of energy and matter based on one set of experiments.

why do you continue to have a blind religious faith in something that is always failing you and proven wrong?

[Bladers]

gotta love this dude. thats the whole point of the scientific method, you fool. Its falsifiable. Meaning that our current understanding can always be improved upon/ revised based on new evidence.


and lets hold off on throwing out a pretty useful tool of energy and matter based on one set of experiments.

my Point is you can't put your faith in something that is ever changing. The scientific truths from last year changes the next year.

What we knew the last 10 years have all but remained the same.

What if in 30 years science discover more and more evidence of there being for example "Life after death", "The mind being separate from the brain", "Intelligent Design" and say, before that time you were dead.

That means your entire life. You believed something that was not "truth" and you put your faith in it. Think about it, 50 years ago, the people who put their faith in the discoveries science had made then. Put their faith in something that was false.

The gravity of the whole situation is, whether what you believe now is the absolute truth or not. But the truth is, in 30 years, what you believe now will not be the truth.

[boozehound]

why do you continue to have a blind religious faith in something that is always failing you and proven wrong?

this just exemplifies your complete lack of understanding of the scientific method. The point of science isnt to prove, it is to disprove. thats the whole ****ing point. Now, you can argue that any dogmatic clinging to a specific law or theory that fails to explain the phenomena in question may be blind faith (see, for example, the resistance to plate tectonics), the scientific method is fundamentally designed to challenge our understandings of the world. SMFH at these losers. Good ol serg wasnt getting enough e-ttention with his old bag of tricks, so now hes jumped the superboy bandwagon as a jew converso, eh? what a fukciing fool you are.

[Nick Young]

this just exemplifies your complete lack of understanding of the scientific method. The point of science isnt to prove, it is to disprove. thats the whole ****ing point. Now, you can argue that any dogmatic clinging to a specific law or theory that fails to explain the phenomena in question may be blind faith (see, for example, the resistance to plate tectonics), the scientific method is fundamentally designed to challenge our understandings of the world. SMFH at these losers. Good ol serg wasnt getting enough e-ttention with his old bag of tricks, so now hes jumped the superboy bandwagon as a jew converso, eh? what a fukciing fool you are.

Lol you're the only fool here, simply believing what other people tell you to believe and purposefully fighting against your natural human instincts by shutting down the spirituality portion of their brain. Only a fool would fight against what their brain is telling them to do and purposefully shut down an entire section of their brain.

And what do you have against Judaism now, sport?

[RaininThrees]

Bladers is right.

Let's just totally get rid of science.

Who needs it, anyway? What had it done for me lately?

[Dictator]

Very nice............so much knowledge with little time to learn. Also I would be careful believing everything America says unless there is 95-100% confirmation and evidence.

[boozehound]

Lol you're the only fool here, simply believing what other people tell you to believe and purposefully fighting against your natural human instincts by shutting down the spirituality portion of their brain. Only a fool would fight against what their brain is telling them to do and purposefully shut down an entire section of their brain.

And what do you have against Judaism now, sport?

listen sport. You and bladers are creating a false schism between cosmology and scientific understanding. Every major world religion (including all major christian sects) acknowledge that their spiritual understanding (read, supernatural) and the scientific explanations of natural phenomena are completely compatible, as they address very different aspects of the human condition. I am comfortable enough in my own spirituality that, unlike you and bladers, I dont have to shove it down everyone's throats, a clear sign of weak faith.

And, I have great respect for Judaism, which is why it is so distasteful that you, having taken such a weak and ill informed view of it, try to claim yourself as one.

[Bladers]

Bladers is right.

Let's just totally get rid of science.

Who needs it, anyway? What had it done for me lately?

I love science.

What has science done for you lately? Science like Physics. Brought us to the moon and into space, satellites, brought you the internet, your computers, tv, electronics, medical advancements, planes, cars, modern architectures, etc.

But none of that has anything to do with *evolution*,
The question you should be asking is what has evolution done for me lately?

[boozehound]

I love science.

What has science done for you lately? Science like Physics. Brought us to the moon, brought you the internet, your computers, tv, electronics, medical advancements, planes, cars, modern architectures, etc.

But none of that has anything to do with *evolution*,
The question you should be asking is what has evolution done for me lately?

and, what science are we talking about in this thread? Oh yeah, physics, just as shaky as evolution. what a ****ing dolt you are.

[N0Skillz]

I think we can all agree Bladers is just a dumbfock that wants attention.

Why don't you go build a boat and try putting every animal in the world on it, and then try making them survive for 40 days.