Monday, November 28, 2011

Not So Fast: Did particles really exceed nature's speed limit?

By now everyone has read about the discovery that there are renegade particles going way too fast. Albert Einstein had said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, but several weeks ago, scientists claimed to have discovered some particles that had not gotten that memo.

The particles, called "neutrinos," were clocked at, oh, something above 299,792,458 miles meters per second. So what gives? Were the officials who enforce the laws of nature asleep at their posts, or what? Not only that, but after the first experiment, another one was performed which found the same thing.

But now, say some scientists at an outfit called "ICARUS," this can't be because any particles that traveled faster than the speed of light would have to emit a certain kind of radiation. But these particles don't. Therefore, they couldn't have traveled faster than the speed of light.

Leave it to a group named "ICARUS" to cause this claim to flame out when it got too close to a new discovery.

Anyway, the ICARUS folks are saying that the scientific stopwatches that measured this must have been measuring incorrectly. We'll see.

I say these neutrinos should have to follow the laws of nature like the rest of us.

4 comments:

Lee said...

At the other end of the physics spectrum, there is a large particle called the "Newt-trino" which was emitted from Congress about fifteen years ago and has slowly been approaching the White House.

Should this particle ever touch the White House, well... it is not known whether life as we know it will end. But we do know that a high-frequency blast known as a "collective shriek" shall be emitted from the broadcast-media universe (BMU), but what effect this shall have is still unknown. Such shrieks have indeed hampered similar Bush particles in the past, but somehow were easily repulsed by Reagan particles.

Nor does the absence of such shrieks imply that a particle shall prosper. Self-satisfied murmuring by the BMU has accompanied the Obama particle for its entire orbit, but it still seems to be imploding.

Seamus said...

The particles, called "neutrinos," were clocked at, oh, something above 299,792,458 miles per second.

I suspect they were only going something about 299,792,458 meters per second.

Seamus said...

Er, *above* 299,792,458 meters per second. (It's really embarrassing when you make such an obvious goof while correcting someone else's error.)

Nate said...

Such a great article Albert Einstein had said that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, it was which was emitted from Congress about fifteen years ago and has slowly been approaching the White House.Thanks fou for sharing this art.