Posted on 02/23/2012 11:33:26 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Physicists operating the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva may have to rethink their claim that particles can travel faster than the speed of light after a source suggested that a bad connection affected the measurements.
They shocked the scientific world by claiming to have disproved Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity.
But a report in the Science Insider journal claims that a bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer may have affected the reading.
Einstein's theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claimed they had recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 186,282 miles per second.
Scientists at CERN claimed that neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds earlier than the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light.
The report in Science Insider said the "60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos' flight and an electronic card in a computer. "
"After tightening the connection and then measuring the time it takes data
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Never argue with Albert. He’ll just make you look foolish.
Obviously they were going downhill.....
They were so overexcited about what they thought was a novel discovery, that they didn’t double check their instruments and measurements. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an inexperienced grad student doing the experiment.
Scientists get incorrect results all the time, which is why we stress repetition. It’s wonderful to have a result that would change the current paradigm—but if it can’t be replicated, it’s worthless.
I hope those scientists at CERN learned their lesson!
“60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos’ flight and an electronic card in a computer. “
Fiber optic? As in a cable that transmits data using light?
What could go wrong?
Pygmies trying to disprove a real scienctist.
Title: “Relativity: The Special and General Theory”
Author: Albert Einstein
Written: 1916 (this revised edition: 1924)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30155/30155-h/30155-h.htm
After spending umpteen-billion dollars to build the LHC, you’d think they’d use better cables than one can pickup at Radio Shack.
My Buick is pretty fast so I challenged light to a drag race. We had to have the race in a vacuum, so the engine wouldn’t run. Stinkin’ cheatin’ light. We was racin’ for pinks. Now I’m walkin’.
yitbos
How is trying to learn about and understand how things work playing God?
I doubt that God intended us to remain ignorant, or He wouldn’t have given us the capacity to learn and explore.
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