Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Space / Astronomy: Faster than Light Neutrinos? Not so Fast...

Space / Astronomy
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Faster than Light Neutrinos? Not so Fast...
Feb 22nd 2012, 20:18

Back in September I reported on a startling result from the CERN and OPERA experiments, claiming that they had found neutrinos created during particle collisions were traveling faster than the speed of light.

They released these findings to a scientific community full of skeptics. Even the researchers working on the experiment were not completely convinced.

Over and over the data they went, looking for any error. None could be found.

Until now.

It appears that a fiberoptic cable connecting a GPS unit and a computer was not properly affixed, causing the GPS signal to be delayed by 60 nanoseconds - virtually the exact difference between the expected and measured arrival times of the neutrinos.

Scientists working on the experiment still need to collect more data now that the hardware has been fixed, but they believe that they have found the problem.

I for one was sort of hoping that it turned out to be true; it would have been terribly exciting to have to re-think our understanding of physics. But alas, no paradigm shifting result after all. In either case, it is good that they got to the bottom of it.

I'm sure that more will be coming out in the next couple months, so stay tuned.

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