Pole.Ĭarl Sagan’s wise words are obviously the guiding principle here “ Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs.” It’s far more likely that there are measurement errors here and the neutrinos are not traveling faster than light and furthermore, the researchers at OPERA know this. Optical detector for ice cube about to be lowered beneath the ice at the S. You do not have to be an expert in particle physics to learn the fundamentals and appreciate the gravity (pun not intended) of the questions being asked these days.
They are now formally asking for help from the rest of the physics community and they will certainly get it. The folks at OPERA are trying to find out where they are making their error but have not been able to do so. It takes 2.43 milliseconds for the neutrinos to travel the 730 km from CERN but they are apparently arriving 60 nanoseconds ahead of schedule. This is what OPERA is investigating, but their neutrinos seem to be arriving early! Imagine a particle so small and wispy, that it could travel through a slab of lead one light year thick and likely bump into nothing! There are billions passing from the sun through you right now and it doesn’t matter if it’s dark where you are, they go right through the Earth and you! Neutrinos come in 3 types and one of the biggest discoveries of the last few years is that they oscillate between these different flavors as they fly along at near light speeds. When I visited the South Pole I signed one of the neutrino detectors at Ice Cube, so I’m always fascinated by any news in the field.
This is pick me up off the floor and find me a trash bin to stuff the standard model into kind of stuff! OPERA is studying neutrinos released from CERN and they keep coming up with a result that shows the neutrinos are traveling faster than light! Cho rightly points out that this would be the greatest discovery in physics for a half century, but I think it would rank higher than that. The OPERA neutrino detector in Italy uses photographic film embedded in lead bricks to detect neutrinos.Īdrian Cho has a story on Science NOW about the scientists at OPERA in Italy asking for some help.
0 kommentar(er)
