neutrinos

CERN confirms speedy neutrinos follow laws of physics after all

Neutrinos can't travel faster than the speed of light after all.

CERN has confirmed that an initial reading, which recorded neutrinos -- nearly mass-less subatomic particles -- sent from CERN to the Gran Sasso laboratory as moving faster than light, was based off of a "faulty element" with the experiment's fiber-optic timing system.

The results, presented today at the International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics in Kyoto, Japan, closes the chapter on a highly surprising finding last year that challenged the conventional wisdom of physics. The results quickly faced public scrutiny.

"Although this result … Read more

Not so fast, neutrinos. CERN says light's speedier still

New experimental evidence is helping disprove last year's highly surprising finding of neutrinos breaking established physics laws by traveling faster than light.

The finding involved clocking the neutrinos--tiny, nearly massless subatomic particles--as they traveled from the CERN particle accelerator near Geneva to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, about 730km away. An experiment called Opera found the neutrinos taking less time to arrive than light would, but now another Gran Sasso experiment, Icarus, showed neutrinos making the journey at a more sedate pace under light speed, CERN said.

That finding comes after news in February that a fiber-optic connection problem … Read more

Bad data connection could explain too-fast neutrinos

A relatively mundane data-link problem could explain last year's surprising finding that subatomic particles called neutrinos appeared to violate physics laws by traveling faster than the speed of light.

Problems with a fiber-optic link in the Opera experiment "could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos," CERN, the European nuclear physics center that generated the neutrinos for the experiment, said in a statement today. The fiber fed GPS location data into the experiment's master clock.

Too short a travel time to the destination--Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics lab … Read more

Reclocked CERN neutrinos still break the speed limit

The physics surprise that rattled scientists in September--neutrinos seemingly traveling faster than the speed of light--has withstood one attempt by researchers to poke a hole in their own findings.

Earlier this year, the researchers clocked the subatomic particles traveling through the Earth from the CERN particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, to Italy's INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory 730 kilometers away. The result, if it holds up under scrutiny, challenges a core physics belief established by Albert Einstein that nothing can travel faster than light.

The new experiment used shorter bursts of neutrinos for more precise measurements, and it … Read more

Physics shocker! Neutrinos clocked faster than light

European physicists have measured tiny particles called neutrinos moving just faster than the speed of light--only a smidgen faster, but enough to raise a serious possibility that Einstein's physics need a major overhaul.

The scientists sent a beam of neutrinos from CERN, on the Swiss-French border near Geneva, to the INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy, 730 kilometers (454 miles) away, in a research project called OPERA. The physicists had planned to study a rare event, the transformation of the muon variety of neutrinos into the tau variety. Instead, they found the extraordinary … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 728: Rock the Roku

Today in "we have actual tech news to report" tech news, Netflix's new box hits the price sweet spot, Napster is offering 6 million DRM-free MP3s (déjà-vu?), and Gizmodo! Confirms! The 3G! iPhone! Release! Date! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 728

Look out, Apple TV: The $100 Netflix Player has arrived http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9947582-1.html

6 million DRM-free MP3s now at Napster http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9945987-7.html

Breaking: iPhone 3G launch date confirmed http://gizmodo.com/391960/iphone-3g-launch-date-confirmed http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/20/ apple_wwdc_rumour_revival/

Microsoft … Read more