Flying faster than the speed of light just might be possible after all: Discusses the CERN experiment that found neutrinos may have been traveling faster than light.
We we can re-categorize this story under Worst Science Stories. It seems the CERN experiment had some problems. In fact, the scientist associated with the experiment has resigned. As reported by the Wall Street Journal,
CERN now says it had identified two possible effects that could have affected the interpretation of the data. One relates to a device known as an oscillator that plays a role in synchronizing clocks at the Swiss and Italian ends. If the oscillator was wrongly calibrated, that would mean the neutrinos had actually traveled slower than light, and all would be right with the world.
A separate—and more troublesome—glitch may have occurred in a fiber-optic cable that brings a Global Positioning System, or GPS, signal to a master clock.
"If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos," CERN said in a one-paragraph "update" posted on its website.
Even last year there were a number of skeptics about this CERN findings, called OPERA. As The Telegraph reported last November,
..another group of scientists conducting a separate study on the same beam of neutrinos at Gran Sasso claims their findings "refute a superluminal (faster than light) interpretation of the OPERA result." Rather than measuring the time it took the neutrinos to travel from CERN to Gran Sasso the second experiment, known as ICARUS, monitored how much energy they had when they arrived. Physicists believe that travelling even slightly faster than light would cause the particles to lose most of their energy in the process. But the ICARUS team's calculations, published online last weekend, seemed to show they arrived with exactly the amount of energy particles moving at light speed should have had – and no more.
Just a quick note. It was so much easier to find Internet stories on the success of the CERN experiment rather than its failure. This says a lot about our news reporters, where the breaking news is put on page one and the correction of the story on page 16. I wanted to make sure I did not do that here (besides, I don't have a page 16 on the blog).