A Small Glimmer of Hope For Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos

sciencehabit writes "The CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva has confirmed Wednesday's report that a loose fiber-optic cable may be behind measurements that seemed to show neutrinos outpacing the speed of light. But the lab also says another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles' speed. The other effect concerns an oscillator that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show."

Comments

Re:This will require time

[gadzook33]

But that's the problem. They need to stop announcing things before they verify the results.

Re:Poor Quality Assurance does not boost confidenc

[fusiongyro]

The problem is that we have one peephole and one organization looking through it and crying wolf. Under normal scientific circumstances, if you say something preposterous, I go spend my $20 replicating your experiment and prove you're a fool. But when your instrument costs us billions dollars and you use it to make absurd, demonstrably insane claims, only to admit you're working the instrument wrong—and you do this repeatedly—you make us all look like fools for spending the money on you. Which is a shame, because the world would be a better place with more research.