RAZ: That's Brian Greene. the speed of the particle (v particle, faster than light in the medium but slower than light in a vacuum), and the speed of light in the medium (v light). After decades of effort, scientists are finally seeing black holes—or are they? You know, if someone runs a marathon and you're going to time how long it takes them, the clock at the finish line better be in synch with the clock at the starting line. Ehrlich's new claim of faster-than-light neutrinos is based on a much more sensitive method than measuring their speed, namely by finding their mass. The OPERA team made headlines after they suggested neutrinos traveled 0.002% faster than light, thus violating Einstein's theory of special relativity. Scientists may now know why, Media and aggression research retracted after scrutiny, Kauri trees mark magnetic flip 42,000 years ago, England's Stonehenge was erected in Wales first, Deaths of health workers in Africa highlight vaccine inequity, France turns to citizens' panel to reduce vaccine skepticism, American Association for the Advancement of Science. Well, back in September, a team of scientists first claimed that a sub-atomic particle called the neutrino could travel faster than the speed of light. And that's what being a physicist is all about, so we want this to be true, but we don't think it is. According to the group's findings, neutrinos made the 731-kilometre journey 60 nanoseconds faster than predicted if they had travelled at light speed. Published: 11 October 2011 (GMT+10) Flickr: CERN Control Center Will relativity need revising? The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. But this ethereal subatomic particle continues to undermine established physical models in … These particles are passing through the earth's crust, so it isn't as though you can just lay out a tape measurer... GREENE: ...from one location to the other. They found that, on average, the neutrinos made the 730-kilometer, 2.43-millisecond trip roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than expected if they were traveling at light speed. All of the wonderful features of relativity will still be with us. GREENE: Yes and no. 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. Physicists have added fuel to a fire that could destroy one of Einstein's fundamental notions: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light. RAZ: So these physicists at CERN, this lab in Switzerland - can you explain how they came to this conclusion that they have managed to send particles traveling faster than the speed of light? But in February, the OPERA team also discovered that a loose fiber optic cable had introduced a delay in their timing system that explained the effect. Some OPERA team members thought the whole episode had besmirched the collaboration's reputation, and in March, two of the team's elected leaders lost a vote of no confidence and tendered their resignations. GREENE: In principle, it's quite straightforward. Neutrinos are weird, but they aren’t that weird. All rights reserved. Then, the inevitable happened: News of the data leaked. By Jonathan Sarfati. GREENE: Well, no one anticipated that a particle could go faster than the speed of light. We'll just have a more refined version of relativity to accommodate these results if they are true. The OPERA results were debunked months ago, however. The OPERA team had timed neutrinos fired through Earth from the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, and found that they made the 730-kilometer trip to Gran Sasso 60 nanosecond faster than they would traveling at light speed. Some are concerned with testing predictions of neutrino behavior. I did keep in mind that in order to travel faster than the speed of light you would need a large amount of energy/fuel, cause the faster an objects mass will increase the faster it travel. They can pass through trillions of miles of lead without being deflected, just pass right through. This works because neutrinos … So let me just point out that the idea that this would somehow throw Einstein out the window... GREENE: E equals MC squared will still be with us. But according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, nothing can cross this barrier. Five different teams of physicists have now independently verified that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos do not travel faster than light. Fair enough. This seems to be the conclusion of the measurements performed by a team of researchers led by Dario … The OPERA team made headlines after they suggested neutrinos traveled 0.002% faster than light, thus violating Einstein's theory of special relativity. Brian Greene, thanks. Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos and the Fallout The OPERA experiment with which the Italians thought they saw faster-than-light neutrinos is officially named the … Gran Sasso houses four particle detectors capable of timing neutrinos fired from CERN: OPERA, ICARUS, BOREXINO, and LVD. GREENE: They're little, tiny particles of matter that are the most standoffish, if you will, of the particles that we know of. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The OPERA experiment data showed neutrinos arriving at the detector surprisingly quickly, supposedly traveling faster than the speed of light. He's a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, talking about experiments with neutrinos that may or may not prove they can travel faster than the speed of light. No. RAZ: If this is actually true, I mean, this could change the way you all and then, of course, we all, think about time and space, right? Physicists have added fuel to a fire that could destroy one of Einstein's fundamental notions: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light. Being nearly massless, neutrinos should travel at nearly the speed of light, which is approximately 186,000 miles (299,338 kilometers) a second. And, frankly, I should say at the outset, most physicists don't believe that any particle does go faster than the speed of light. Other research is focused on measurement of unknown properties of neutrinos; there is special interest in experiments that determine their masses and rates of CP violation, which cannot be predicted from current theory. Moreover, you have to make sure that the clocks at the two positions where the particles begin and end, they must be synchronized to fantastic precision. An extraordinary result like this, in the words of Carl Sagan, requires extraordinary evidence and we don't have that extraordinary evidence yet. They take these particles and they fire them from Switzerland to another receptor at another laboratory in Gran Sasso in Italy. Neutrinos faster than light? Explain why. -Sergio Bertolucci, research director at CERN, on faster-than-light neutrinos You know the story. We're waiting for the proof. Accuracy and availability may vary. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. GREENE: And I think, if you were to do a survey of most physicists, we'd all pretty much say the same thing. New results, announced today in Japan, contradict those announced last September by a 170-member crew working with the OPERA particle detector in Italy's subterranean Gran Sasso National Laboratory. For instance, OPERA, which detected the apparently faster-than-light neutrinos beamed from CERN, lies inside the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. One such process is that a muon neutrino that's moving faster than the speed of light will start to radiate electrons and positrons, losing energy as it does so. So they're ghostly particles that we require in order to make sense of data from particle accelerators around the world, to make sense of observations of astrophysical phenomenon. Can you explain, first of all, what neutrinos actually are? A month later, researchers working with the ICARUS particle detector, also housed in Gran Sasso, measured the speed of neutrinos fired from CERN and found that they travel at light speed, as predicted. Neutrinos that travel faster than light? No, they do not. A challenge to Gardner's model comes … GREENE: ...than a gigabyte. So we know that the neutrinos are certainly real, but their speed is what is at question here. And many of us think that it will take an independent experiment, doing it a different way, getting the same answer before we believe it. Astronomers spy promising blob around our nearest neighbor star, but is it a planet? I mean, these are very difficult experiments when you're trying to calculate the precise speed of this little ghostly particle called a neutrino. So instead of the nail in the coffin of faster-than-light neutrinos, the new suite of results is more like the sod planted atop their grave. You're not being a skeptic just to be difficult. The same lab that first reported the shocking results last year, which could have upended modern physics, now reports that neutrinos … Superluminal (faster than light) neutrinos were the result of the OPERA experiment, a collaboration between the CERN physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and … © 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science. GREENE: Well, it's very hard to precisely measure the distance between two places. He's professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, and author most recently, of "The Hidden Reality.". And many of us think that it will take an independent. The origin of this misconception comes from a 2011 result. Neutrinos, like everything else in the known universe, can travel only at or slower than lightspeed, putting to rest speculation that the ethereal particles may have broken the cosmic speed limit. Discussing recent results suggesting neutrinos may be traveling "faster than light". The results show that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light. So the chorus has sung and the final curtain has fallen on the faster-than-light neutrino saga. RAZ: So why all the skepticism if they've basically shown that it's faster? By that point, most physicists deemed faster-than-light neutrinos really most sincerely dead. Other researchers are cautious about the result, but if … So either the measurements are incorrect, or physicists must revise many trusted theories. A recent experiment has demonstrated that neutrinos do not, in fact, travel faster than light. "The story captured the public imagination, and has given people the opportunity to see the scientific method in action—an unexpected result was put up for scrutiny, thoroughly investigated and resolved in part thanks to collaboration between normally competing experiments," Bertolucci says in a CERN press release. To the astonishment of … Watch blue whales try to dodge ships in Patagonia, In biblical times, purple was the new black, Nine hikers mysteriously perished in the Russian mountains in 1959. But can we move on now? These new experiments have truly rocked the scientific community. RAZ: Okay. Faster-than-light neutrinos ... aren't, scientists conclude The final nail in the coffin may have been dealt to the idea that neutrino particles can travel faster than light. Scientists officially announced Friday (Sept. 23) that subatomic particles called neutrinos may be passing the ultimate speed limit, zooming at a velocity faster than light. RAZ: Still - they still don't believe it. All rights Reserved. is it possible for neutrinos to faster than light? NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This time the scientists got it wrong According to Einstein's theories of relativity, this should not have been possible. RAZ: 'Cause you actually really want to believe this. Headlines were buzzing with reports that neutrinos have been clocked travelling faster than light, and even more with claims like “Einstein’s theory busted by new discovery”. RAZ: Okay, so the idea of that nothing travels faster than the speed of light, that obviously is part of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, this is a foundation of physics. The team tried and tested every permutation of software, hardware, and theory that they could think of, and through every step, every bug they fixed, every increment of understanding they earned, the evidence for faster than light neutrinos stood as solid as the mountain above the experiment. … There are several active research areas involving the neutrino. As such, neutrinos on Earth might only go faster than the highest speed of light we have so far discovered. GREENE: Well, we live for things which change our understanding of reality. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. "That's how science moves forward." And what they do is they calculate how long it took the neutrinos to get there and they calculate how long the journey is and that's all you need to figure out speed. Now, physicists have done it again with a fine-tuned experiment that matches the previous results. suggested neutrinos traveled 0.002% faster than light, a loose fiber optic cable had introduced a delay in their timing system that explained the effect, found that they travel at light speed, as predicted, two of the team's elected leaders lost a vote of no confidence and tendered their resignations, All four have now found that the neutrino's speed is consistent with the speed of light, The MINOS team has also found that neutrinos travel at light speed, Hopes evaporate for the superheavy element flerovium having a long life, The cloak-and-dagger tale behind this year’s most anticipated result in particle physics. And it's very hard to get clocks into sync. Turns out, the results were likely flawed, according to a growing scientific consensus some si… Guy Raz talks to Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, about the findings. Needless to say, there were skeptics. Nevertheless, researchers kept at their efforts to test the result. The lowest-energy neutrinos we’ve ever detected have so much energy that their speed must be, at minimum, 99.99999999995% the speed of light, which means that they can … The MINOS team has also found that neutrinos travel at light speed, as Fermilab's Phil Adamson reported at the meeting. Enough already. Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos Aren't. The speed of neutrinos was also measured by researchers working with the MINOS experiment, which shoots neutrinos 735 kilometers from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, to a detector in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota.

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