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A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS who made international headlines last year when they suggested that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light have today conceded that Albert Einstein was right all along – and that the particles, like everything else, are bound by the universe’s speed limit.
Researchers working at CERN caused a storm when they published experimental results showing the particles could out-pace light by some six kilometres (3.7 miles) per second.
The findings threatened to upend modern physics and smash a hole in Albert Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity, which described the velocity of light as the maximum speed in the cosmos.
The neutrinos were timed on the journey from CERN’s giant underground lab near Geneva to the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, after travelling 732 kilometres (454 miles) through the Earth’s crust.
To do the trip, the neutrinos should have taken 0.0024 seconds. Instead, the particles were recorded as hitting the detectors in Italy 0.00000006 seconds sooner than expected, the preliminary experiment had shown.
But on Friday the researchers told the International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, being held in Kyoto, that the earlier results were wrong and faulty kit was to blame.
“The previous data taken up to 2011 with the neutrino beam from CERN to Gran Sasso were revised taking into account understood instrumental effects,” the team said.
“A coherent picture has emerged with both previous and new data pointing to a neutrino velocity consistent with the speed of light.”
The initial findings had been greeted with a combination of excitement and scepticism, even from those involved in the experiment, who urged other physicists to carry out their own checks to corroborate or refute what had been seen.
As part of this verification, an experiment called ICARUS at the Gran Sasso Laboratory took a separate look at the flight of seven neutrinos that had also been recorded by the original team of researchers known as OPERA.
Carlo Rubbia, a Nobel winner and spokesperson for the ICARUS project announced the neutrinos had kept within the universal speed limit.
In March the Italian physicist at the head of OPERA resigned following calls for his dismissal after tests contradicted the original experimental findings.
“I hope OPERA will find new unity and a new leadership to pursue its main target of observing the appearance of a new type of neutrinos,” said Antonio Masiero, the deputy head of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics.
The initial findings had provoked howls of incredulity in some quarters.
“If this result at CERN is proved to be right, and particles are found to travel faster than the speed of light, then I am prepared to eat my shorts, live on TV,” Jim Al-Khalili, a professor of theoretical physics at Britain’s University of Surrey, declared at the time.
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neutrino. knock knock. who’s there?
You, sir, win the internet
Awhhh. Feck..
Just a little part of me (The extremely geeky part) wanted oul Einstein to be wrong.
Nah! I’m glad he’s right ( so far). I have read a couple of books on his theories ( super geek) and it would be a shame if it was all a waste of time. Besides, based on all of the info I have read it would have been a major,MAJOR upset if he was proved wrong.
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”
Terry Pratchett
CERN “admits they were wrong”.
Headline makes it sound like science has an agenda or something.
An English, Scots, Welsh and Irishman were in a bar and the conversation turns to the fastest thing in the universe, the Scotsman says it must be a blink it’s very fast over and done with before you know it he argues, the Welshman says no way it’s definitely a thought one moment your mind is blank then instantly there’s a thought in there nothing could be faster he argues, the Englishman says don’t be stupid everyone knows the fastest thing is light even Einstein said it, you have a dark room you flick a switch and immediately it’s filled with light nothing is quicker he argues. Paddy is staying quiet and they ask his opinion he says well your all wrong including Einstein the fastest thing in the universe is diarrhoea! Intrigued they ask him to explain, well says Paddy I went for a few pints the other evening and I must have got a dodgy one cause when I got home I went to bed and after a while I woke up and I felt this rumble in my stomach and before I had time to blink, think or turn on the f**king light the bed was destroyed!
Phew, I had some Jehovah’s Witnesses all up in my face about this recently. Scientists were wrong, our nonsense must be right.
Yeah, they’re not so into logic.
The Stopwatch was broken?
Theory of relativity, namely the special one, is proven exceptionally well by enormous amount of experimental data. It was clear that this news about faster than light neutrinos was trash. We laughed about it with a few colleague scientists from outset. Even the general theory of relativity gains more and more proof, although it has inherent problems with quantisation. We do not really know what happens in very strong gravitational fields, although astronomically data for black holes is considerable by now. Yet modern cosmology is in crisis: what black matter and energy means is anyone’s guess
You should ask Spock.
:)
CERN, bunch of thicks.
What shoddy reporting; this article is misleading and totally incorrect! CERN sent the particles to the Gran Sasso Laboratory on request and it was faulty equipment at THAT lab which provided the incorrect data. The scientists were not CERN scientists, they were Gran Sasso Laboratory scientists!
Perhaps, but was it not CERN scientists who published the initial results?
pure rude
huge waste of money?
Why? By understanding this we gain a better understanding of the world. the theory of relativity is just that a theory. It needs to be proved or disproved.
Yup. What a pity. That money could have been spent on wars or bailing out banks.
Damien please educate yourself, before you make another stupid comment.
Eamon, he didn’t make a comment. He posed a question. Please think before you type another stupid, tantrummy, retort.
Wasn’t the CERN project created to determine the potential existence Higgs Boson as its main objective anyway?
Finding this would change the trajectory of Physics so I wouldn’t call it a waste of money by any stretch of the imagination!
@Garreth the scientific definition of a theory (per Wikipedia) is:
A scientific theory is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment.”[1][2] Scientists create scientific theories from hypotheses that have been corroborated through the scientific method, then gather evidence to test their accuracy. As with all forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and do not make apodictic propositions; instead, they aim for predictive and explanatory force.[3][4]
So it’s very nice Mr Einstein and it is not “just” a theory as the layman would understand it.
The great thing about science is that evolves. We may find in future the theory of relatively is somehow inaccurate or incomplete. It doesn’t mean Einstein was an idiot or that the whole world of science is somehow useless, and the religious types abusing that are idiots because such a discovery would and could only be made by another science, not by someone studying their bible real hard.
HaHa, take that neutrinos!!
And the barman says ‘Sorry, we don’t serve Nutrino’s.
A Nutrino goes into a bar and asks for a pint.
Well *that* is disappointing. :(
Seem to remember a separate test in the States saying the same as what they said in Cern about the neutrino.
Of course.
have your say