Particles that dared to defy Einstein put to the test

[AMDave]

Particles that dared to defy Einstein put to the test - Glenda Kwek - September 27, 2011

A US government agency is set to test the results of the discovery of particles travelling faster than the speed of light, announced last week, which shocked the physics world and led to dreams of time travel and extra dimensions.
The new tests could show Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity - that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light - may be sound after all.
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[Dirk Broer]

1905? Around that time people also believed nothing could travel faster than sound as well....

[Brucifer]

Definitely a lot riding on the verification!

[NeoGen]

Or... like they said in an episode of Futurama a few years back... it was something like.... "to be able to travel faster than the current speed of light, but at the same time keeping in accordance with Einstein's law, we increased the speed of light itself".

[AMDave]

Or... like they said in an episode of Futurama a few years back... it was something like.... "to be able to travel faster than the current speed of light, but at the same time keeping in accordance with Einstein's law, we increased the speed of light itself".

Ah. Someone was thinking well that day. That sounds more like a probable truth and something that can be tested.

"This anomaly corresponds to a relative difference of the muon neutrino velocity with respect to the speed of light (v-c)/c = (2.48 \pm 0.28 (stat.) \pm 0.30 (sys.)) \times 10-5."
(from the OPERA readings link in the article)

Note the "\times 10-5" on the end. Looks like the difference is very small indeed ... on an earthly scale.

It may be that when we tested Einstein's theory previously we had not accounted for these particles.
It is possible that there could be a slight revision in the offing.

[Brucifer]

Well look at the bright side... it gives all those scientists and institutions something to do to justify the expense of their toys... lol

[AMDave]

It always pays to have a second set of eyes look at the problem.
A follow-up group found an error in the measurement method that accounts almost exactly for the discrepancy.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.2685
Ironically it was a relative motion discrepancy that was unaccounted for: GPS satellites are not geostationary.

[Ototero]

And there's me thinking Einstein's formula should be E=½mC²