http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... tists.html
Spoiler: show
The science world was left in shock when workers at the world's largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light – a feat that Einstein said was impossible.
If the findings are proven to be accurate, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the way the universe and everything within it works.
Einstein's theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claim they have recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometres) per second.
The results have so astounded researchers that American and Japanese scientists have been asked to verify the results before they are confirmed as a discovery.
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.
If the findings are proven to be accurate, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the way the universe and everything within it works.
Einstein's theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claim they have recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometres) per second.
The results have so astounded researchers that American and Japanese scientists have been asked to verify the results before they are confirmed as a discovery.
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.
