'We have broken speed of light' 22 Sep 2011
Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, said: "We have high
confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that
could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing.
"We now want colleagues to check them independently."
A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos were fired over a period of 3 years
from CERN towards Gran Sassoin Italy, 730km (500 miles) away, where they
were picked up by giant detectors.
Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second,
but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds – or 60 billionths of a second –less
than light beams would have taken.
Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a
fundamental rethink of the laws of physics.
John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear
Research who was not involved in the experiment, said Einstein's theory
underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics".
The theory, which helps explain everything from black holes to the Big Bang,
"has worked perfectly up to now", he said.
According to the law that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of
light squared, or E=mc2, firing an object faster than light would require
an infinite amount of energy.
Proof that something had travelled faster would pose major questions about
our understanding of the laws of nature because, for example, something that
travels faster than light would in theory arrive before it left.