If you haven’t heard about the experiment that apparently showed that subatomic particles called neutrinos might move faster than light (what we in the know call FTL, to make us look cooler), then I assume this is your first time on the internet. If that’s the case, then you can read my writeup on what happened.
Basically, neutrinos move very very fast, almost at the speed of light. Some scientists created neutrinos at CERN in Geneva, and then measured how long it took them to reach a detector called OPERA, located in Italy. When they did the math, it looked like the neutrinos actually got there by traveling a hair faster than the speed of light! 60 nanoseconds faster, to be accurate.
Was relativity doomed?
Nope. In fact, relativity may very well be what saves the day here.
First, most scientists were skeptical. Even the people running the experiment were skeptical, and were basically asking everyone else for help. They figured they might have made a mistake as well, and couldn’t figure out what had happened. Relativity is an extremely well-tested theory, and doesn’t (easily) allow for FTL. Despite some headlines screaming that Einstein might be wrong, most everyone figured the problem lay elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment