Faster than light particles found in nuclear research experiment

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RIA Novosti, PUBLISHED September 24, 2011

A startling experiment run by one of the world's foremost laboratories, appears to show that elusive, almost weightless subatomic particles called neutrinos travel faster than the light, previously thought to be impossible, the ScienceNOW portal said on Friday.

If the results are confirmed, they would fundamentally change the understanding of how the universe works, physicists believe.

Neutrinos sent 730 kilometers (453.6 miles) underground between laboratories in Switzerland and Italy arrived a fraction of a second sooner than they should have at the speed of light, said researchers with Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

"It's a straightforward time-of-flight measurement," said Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern and spokesperson for the 160-member Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) that staged the experiment.

"We measure the distance and we measure the time, and we take the ratio to get the velocity, just as you learned to do in high school," Ereditato said, adding that the uncertainty in the measurement is 10 nanoseconds. "After many months of studies and cross checks, we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement."

The scientists on the OPERA project will continue their research, but "are also looking forward to independent measurements to fully assess the nature of this observation," Ereditato said.

Topics: Europe

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