CERN produces a breakthrough.
In September, physicists were scratching their heads at CERN when neutrinos were recorded as traveling faster than the speed of light. That shouldn’t happen unless Einstein turns out to be wrong.
The experiment is part of the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) project, and saw neutrinos fired 732km from CERN to the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy. The issue was, some of those neutrinos arrived early by billionths of a second, and therefore faster than light speed. This obviously caused some concern that either something new had been discovered, or more likely, an error had been made with the measurements…
The only thing to do was check everything and see if an error could be found. A possible explanation was presented a few weeks later by Ronald van Elburg at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. His theory was that the movement of GPS clocks based in satellites orbiting the Earth had not been accounted for and could explain the time difference.
CERN has now carried another neutrino firing test and yet again had them arrive faster than the speed of light. This time, however, the precision of the experiment was better and the analysis more robust. More physicist were also involved in this second experiment meaning there is more confidence in the results.
This experiment doesn’t prove faster than light travel, it just discounts certain criteria as to why it may have occurred. The GPS time issue has yet to be resolved and could still be the explanation for the faster than light claims.
