Particles Faster Than The Speed of Light?

That is what the OPERA collaboration research is showing in their second experiment which is showing the same result: neutrino's moving faster than the speed of light. Their first experiment in September showed the same results but was dismissed by physicists and factors which could have lead to a mistaken reading were brought up. Now however, one of those main concerns has been dismissed.

The First Experiment

The first experiment back in September was the firing time of protons from CERN and the neutrino arrival time in the Gran Sasso lab hundreds of miles away. When the experiment was done and the data checked however, it was discovered that the neutrino's had arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than predicted. By all appearances, the neutrino's had been moving faster than the speed of light.

Answering the Doubts

A chorus call of debates came up however over the validity of the experiment. One of the most cited arguments was that the stream of particles had smeared too wide to be properly read. To answer this question, the test was conducted again but this time in smaller pulses to narrow the stream and get more accurate readings. The results proved the same as the first test.

There are still other tests which have to be conducted, but the implications if the tests are correct would throw most of modern physics into chaos since the speed of light is a constant which much of modern particle physics is based upon. This latest result has given the team behind the experiment more confident in their findings.