See: http://brightmorningstar.blog.com/2008/10/21/gavin-ardleys-book-aquinas-and-kant/
The following has been taken from: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/einsteins-theory-in-a-spin-as-neutrinos-pass-speed-of-light-20110923-1kp92.html
Einstein's theory in a spin as neutrinos pass speed of light Dennis Overbye
September 24, 2011
Have we broken the speed of light?
International scientists make breakthrough discovery as sub-atomic particles are found to be quicker than the speed of light.
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NEW YORK: The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit - the speed of light - that was set by Albert Einstein in 1905. If true, it is a result that would change the world. But that ''if'' is enormous.
Even before the physicists had presented their results at a seminar at CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, near Geneva, yesterday, a chorus of physicists had risen up on blogs and elsewhere arguing that it was way too soon to give up on Einstein and that there was probably some experimental error. Incredible claims require incredible evidence.
''These guys have done their level best, but before throwing Einstein on the bonfire, you would like to see an independent experiment,'' said John Ellis, a CERN theorist who has published work on the speeds of the ghostly particles known as neutrinos.
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Albert Einstein ... theory of relativity set speed of light. Photo: AP
According to scientists familiar with the paper, the neutrinos raced from a particle accelerator at CERN, where they were created, to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy, a distance of about 720 kilometres, about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam. That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 0.0025 per cent.
Even this small deviation would open up the possibility of time travel and play havoc with notions of cause and effect.
Einstein - whose theory of relativity established the speed of light as the ultimate limit - said that if you could send a message faster than light, ''You could send a telegram to the past''.
Alvaro DeRejula, a theorist at CERN, called the claim ''flabbergasting''. ''If it is true, then we truly haven't understood anything about anything,'' Dr DeRejula said.''It looks too big to be true. The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.''
The group that is reporting the results is known as OPERA, for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus.
Antonio Ereditato, the physicist at the University of Bern who heads the group, agreed with Dr DeRejula and others who expressed shock. He told the BBC that OPERA - after much discussion - had decided to release its results in order to get them scrutinised. ''My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing,'' Dr Ereditato said. ''Then I would be relieved.''
Australian physicists said that the result would be revolutionary if true, but remained sceptical.
Michael Murphy, of Swinburne University of Technology, said: ''This is one of the biggest claims you can make, so it requires a lot of scrutiny.''
Dr Murphy said the researchers had done the right thing in opening up their analysis for other scientists to check.
Nicole Bell, of the University of Melbourne, said: ''If it is true, it is ground breaking. But it will take a lot of convincing.'' Dr Bell said the find not only challenged current theory, it also did not fit with previous measurements of the speed of neutrinos, based on ones emitted from a supernova explosion in 1987.
Neutrinos are among the strangest denizens of the quantum subatomic world. Once thought to be massless and to travel at the speed of light, they can sail through walls and planets like wind through a screen door. Morever, they come in three varieties and can morph from one form to another as they move, an effect that the OPERA experiment was designed to detect.
Dr Ellis noted that a similar experiment was reported by a collaboration known as Minos in 2007 on neutrinos created at Fermilab, in Illinois, and beamed to the Soudan Mine in Minnesota. That group found - although with less precision - that the neutrino speeds were consistent with the speed of light.
Moreover, measurements of neutrinos emitted from a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987 suggested that their speeds differed from light by less than one part in a billion.
John Learned, a neutrino astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said that if the results turned out to be true, it could be the first hint that neutrinos can take a shortcut through space, through extra dimensions.
Joe Lykken, of Fermilab, said: ''Special relativity only holds in flat space, so if there is a warped fifth dimension, it is possible that on other slices of it the speed of light is different.''
But it is far too soon for such mind-bending speculation.
The OPERA results will generate a rush of experiments aimed at confirming or repudiating them, Dr Learned said. ''This is revolutionary and will require convincing replication,'' he said.
The New York Times, with Deborah Smith
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/einsteins-theory-in-a-spin-as-neutrinos-pass-speed-of-light-20110923-1kp92.html#ixzz1Z1IiSK5Z
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