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CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos
intellitech writes "Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists — because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light. Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a few billionths of a second early. The results will soon be online to draw closer scrutiny to a result that, if true, would upend a century of physics. The lab's research director called it 'an apparently unbelievable result.'" Also on the AP wire, as carried by PhysOrg, which similarly emphasizes that the data are preliminary.
Update: 09/22 20:43 GMT by T : Reader Curunir_wolf adds a link to the experiment itself, the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus, or OPERA, which "was developed to study the phenomenon of neutrino transmutation (neutrinos changing from one type to another. The speed of the neutrinos, of course, was an entirely unexpected observation."
This was a rational piece without too many sensationalist remarks! How do we show them we appreciate decent scientific writing as opposed to the crap we normally get?
Of course, but these aren't crackpots screaming that modern physics is wrong. They're getting puzzling results, even after doublechecking, so they're asking others to verify. This is the by-the-book scientific process.
the knowledge that is the cornerstone of modern physics, knowledge that has been tested time and time again and found true, is upturned by one experiment?
Well, it's not like it never happened before...
If their finding is correct, it doesn't mean that previous experiments were wrong. It just means that things are more complicated than we thought them to be. It's a darker side of the Occam's Razor - you get rid of unnecessary things, sure, but how do you determine whether they are unnecessary? why, based on your experimental input - you need the simplest model that can explain the results that you see, and predict future results when you test it. Problem is, your experiments might not be covering some edge case, and therefore you didn't see the complete picture - and oversimplified your theory.