Time Travel

Another article discussing muon neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light:

CERN finding stuns Japan experts / If confirmed, discovery would ‘challenge fundamentals of modern physics’

Masae Honma and Noriyuki Yoshida / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

The finding by an 11-nation research group, including Nagoya University, that neutrinos may travel faster than light has astonished physicists in Japan and around the world.

Confirmation of the discovery would overturn Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which asserts that the speed of light can never be exceeded.

Modern physics has been built on the basis of Einstein’s theory, and the impact of the startling data announced Thursday in Europe on neutrino studies alone would be immeasurable, according to experts.

“This challenges a fundamental principle universally accepted in today’s physics,” said Prof. Yoichiro Suzuki at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, who expressed surprise Friday at the news that one type of neutrino–muon neutrinos–was found to exceed the speed of light.

Muon neutrinos are one of the three known types of nerutrinos.

The astonishing finding announced Thursday was made by researchers working on a research project called OPERA. As part of the project, neutrinos emitted from a research center in suburban Geneva arrived at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in central Italy faster than the speed of light.

The Swiss research center is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

The Italian facility has the world’s largest underground laboratory for experiments in particle physics.

Einstein’s theory of special relativity was published in 1905 and has since been the foundation of major strides in modern physics.

The theory says nothing that has a mass can travel faster than light. According to the theory, when the speed of an object approaches the speed of light, its mass increases so much that it cannot accelerate any further.

Since muon neutrinos, like the other two other kinds of neutrinos, have a mass, they should not be able to exceed the speed of light, according to Einstein’s theory.

The theory explains a number of other strange things that happen when an object approaches the speed of light.

For example, time slows down for an object traveling at that speed, and space shrinks.

The notion that time can slow and space can shrink has had an enormous impact on a large number of fields beyond physics.

The late Alfred North Whitehead, considered one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, established a unique view of space based mainly on Einstein’s theory.

The most recent finding may lead to a revolutionary change in not only the basic principles of physics but also in our concepts of space and time.

Masanori Yamauchi, deputy director of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization’s Institute of Particle and Nuclear Studies, said: “If independent studies by a plural number of experimental facilities confirm the same finding, the theory of special relativity will have to be modified for the first time in 100 years. But I have no idea how it will have to be modified.”

Hitoshi Murayama, director general of the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Physics and Mathematics, said confirmation of the European discovery could mean that strange phenomena only considered possible in the world of science fiction may become possible in reality. For example, time machines could allow us to travel back in time and change events.

If the CERN-Gran Sasso finding is confirmed, the neutrinos in the experiment arrived at the Gran Sasso Laboratory “earlier” than when they were emitted from CERN, 730 kilometers away, Murayama said.

There have been countless articles on the subject since the 9/22 announcement. The article above gets right to the point of the most relevant issues that the findings present to physicists around the world.

We could very well be facing the dawn of a new understanding of space and time.

Time travel.

Seriously, a physical reality?

The conspiracy nuts are going to have a field day.

There have already been a number of neutrino jokes:

-We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here, said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

-Neutrino. Knock knock.

-Hipsters liked neutrinos before they arrived.

-I wrote a speed of light joke…but a neutrino beat me to it.

-A. To prove particles can travel faster than light Q. Why did the neutrino cross the road?

-I’m going to tweet my neutrino joke yesterday.

Here are a couple highly cited articles from Reuters on the subject:

Particles found to break speed of light

UPDATE 1-Particles found to break speed of light

The video from Reuters.

From EuroNews:

A random video that offers a nice explanation of the discovery in lay terms:

A LiveScience article on neutrinos and time travel.

Another recent article by Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York, “Has a Speeding Neutrino Really Overturned Einstein?” addresses a few interesting points. Here are some excerpts:

The CERN announcement was electrifying. Some physicists burst out with glee, because it meant that the door was opening to new physics (and more Nobel Prizes). New, daring theories would need to be proposed to explain this result. Others broke out in a cold sweat, realizing that the entire foundation of modern physics might have to be revised. Every textbook would have to be rewritten, every experiment recalibrated.

Cosmology, the very way we think of space, would be forever altered. The distance to the stars and galaxies and the age of the universe (13.7 billion years) would be thrown in doubt. Even the expanding universe theory, the Big Bang theory, and black holes would have to be re-examined.

Moreover, everything we think we understand about nuclear physics would need to be reassessed. Every school kid knows Einstein’s famous equation E=MC2, where a small amount of mass M can create a vast amount of energy E, because the speed of light C squared is such a huge number. But if C is off, it means that all nuclear physics has to be recalibrated. Nuclear weapons, nuclear medicine and radioactive dating would be affected because all nuclear reactions are based on Einstein’s relation between matter and energy.

If all this wasn’t bad enough, it would also mean that the fundamental principles of physics are incorrect. Modern physics is based on two theories, relativity and the quantum theory, so half of modern physics would have to be replaced by a new theory.

There’s still need for confirmation before this can qualify as a discovery. It could just be a fluke.

How will this astonishing result play out? As Carl Sagan once said, remarkable claims require remarkable proof. Laboratories around the world, like Fermilab outside Chicago, will redo the CERN experiments and try to falsify or verify their results.

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