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On June 30, 1905 a 26-year old Albert Einstein, working in the Swiss Patent Office, submitted a paper to what then was the most prestigious physics journal in the world, Analen der Physik. The English translation of the title being On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Over the next several years, the theory he proposed in that paper gained the name Special Theory of Relativity (to distinguish it from an expanded General Theory of Relativity he published eleven years later). An outcome of that 1905 theory, validated by a century of experiments afterwards, is that the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) is an ultimate speed that no particle having (rest) mass can ever achieve. Approach, yes. Achieve, no.
After more than a century of validation, scientists agree and firmly believe that nothing, absolutely nothing with (rest) mass can travel faster than the speed of light. This property has been proven over and over and is demonstrated every second of every day. Every global positioning satellite (GPS), every electronic device from cell phone to iphone, every planet and every star, as far as we can tell obeys and confirms this law. No particle with (rest) mass can travel faster that the speed of light. None. Nada.
Within the last month, however, there are validated data, made by respected physicists, that measures neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. Is the data valid? Can it be that something with (rest) mass actually travels faster than the speed of light. Or, it in an error in measurement?
First, I must explain what a neutrino is. Most readers will at least remember learning that the atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. If that’s all you remember, you’re back at about 1930. Between the 1950’s and early 1960’s, physicists discovered that there were not just proton, neutron, and electron, but hundreds, literally hundreds, of elementary particles that are either in the atmosphere or are part of the nucleus of every atom. They have classifications like hadrons, leptons, and muons and individual names like Kaons, Pions, Lambda, Xi, and Tau. In the midst of these hundreds of particles is a tiny, tiny particle called the neutrino. First postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, the neutrino was not verifiably detected until 1956.
Most of the neutrinos intersecting the earth emanate from the sun and there are a bazillion of them. These little neutrinos are so numerous that if you held your thumbnail out in the sunlight, more than 65 billion neutrinos would pass through your thumbnail every second. We have yet to detect any interaction of a neutrino with matter, except a direct collision, and those are extremely, extremely rare. The neutrino is so tiny that if the 93 million miles between the Earth and the Sun were entirely filled with lead, only one or two neutrinos would actually collide with any lead atoms. Most would pass right on through like there was nothing there. Put it this way. Imagine there are only two birds on the entire earth, tiny finches, and they can neither smell, hear, or see. Imagine that these tiny finches could fly anywhere from ten feet above the earth to 100,000 feet. What is the probability that those two would collide in midair somewhere? Now, you understand how tiny and non-interacting is the neutrino.
For a long time, it was thought that the neutrino was massless, like light beams. Now, however, we know that the neutrino does have a tiny, tiny (rest) mass, although it is so small we can only put a lower bound on how small, not actually measure it (yet).
Now the exciting part – maybe.
Scientists in Geneva, Switzerland may have clocked neutrinos traveling faster that the speed of light.
In the latest experiment, physicists at the CERN facility in Geneva, Switzerland, fire neutrinos through the earth, under the Alps, to a detector in Gran Sasso, Italy some 440 miles away. As we said, there are almost no collisions, so the Alps might as well be invisible. Using GPS and atomic clocks, the scientific team clocked the neutrinos as traveling ever so slightly faster than the speed of light, ever so slightly.
This is not the first time this has occurred. Similar measurements were taken in 2007 at Fermilab outside Chicago and similar results were reported.
Is this true or are there errors in the measurements? Today, no one knows for sure. No physicist actually believes that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, yet no physicist has yet been able to show what might be wrong with the measurements, either.
Now, if we do discover that something can travel faster than the speed of light, well, we’ll not only have to rewrite physics, but who knows what else might come out of that Pandora’s Box. That would almost be too exciting to imagine. The impact to science would be HUGE.
At this point we can only say that it is a mystery how two separate measurements, taken years apart could show that something with mass can travel faster than the speed of light. It is a mystery where the error might lie. It is a mystery whether there be any error.
Perhaps the data are real?
Personally, I believe that an error will be found in the data but that’s the excitement of physics and the cutting edge of today’s discoveries.