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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Neutrinos may travel (very slightly) faster than light after all

There is still a small possibility of an error in the measurement of the distance between the start and the end point due to some GPS effect. But the news from CERN is that they have repeated OPERA the neutrino experiment and the faster than light effect is still there. The new experiment rules out one of the potential sources of systematic error.
The difference is so slight that it is quite possible that the ultimate culprit will turn out to be some weird systematic error in our measurement of light speed that turns out to be the issue. The speed

Contrary to widespread speculation, this does not contradict Einstein's theory of relativity any more than Einstein contradicted Newton. Newton was well aware that there would be significant implications if the speed of light was less than instantaneous. Einstein was aware that his theory of relativity could not be reconciled with the then emerging theory of quantum mechanics.

The theory of relativity does not predict that nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Instead, one consequence of the theory is that if something is moving slower than the speed of light it cannot be accelerated to move faster and that if something is moving faster than the speed of light it cannot be decelerated to move slower.

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