GENEVA
(AP) — A startling find at one of the world's foremost laboratories
that a subatomic particle seemed to move faster than the speed of light
has scientists around the world rethinking Albert Einstein and one of
the foundations of physics.
Now they are planning to put the
finding to further high-speed tests to see if a revolutionary shift in
explaining the workings of the universe is needed — or if the European
scientists made a mistake.
Researchers
at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research outside Geneva,
who announced the discovery Thursday are still somewhat surprised
themselves and planned to detail their findings on Friday.
If
these results are confirmed, they won't change at all the way we live or
the way the universe behaves. After all, these particles have
presumably been speed demons for billions of years. But the finding will
fundamentally change our understanding of how the world works,
physicists said.
Only two labs elsewhere in the world can try to
replicate the results. One is Fermilab outside Chicago and the other is a
Japanese lab put on hold by the March tsunami and earthquake. Fermilab
officials met Thursday about verifying the European study and said their
particle beam is already up and running. The only trouble is that their
measuring systems aren't nearly as precise as the Europeans' and won't
be upgraded for a while, said Fermilab scientist Rob Plunkett.
"This
thing is so important many of the normal scientific rivalries fall by
the wayside," said Plunkett, a spokesman for the Fermilab team's
experiments. "Everybody is going to be looking at every piece of
information."
Plunkett said he is keeping an open mind on whether
Einstein's theories need an update, but he added: "It's dangerous to lay
odds against Einstein. Einstein has been tested repeatedly over and
over again."
Going faster than light is something that is just not
supposed to happen according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of
relativity — the one made famous by the equation E equals mc2. The speed
of light — 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second) —
has long been considered a cosmic speed limit.
"We'd be thrilled
if it's right because we love something that shakes the foundation of
what we believe," said famed Columbia University physicist Brian Greene.
"That's what we live for."
The claim is being greeted with skepticism inside and outside the European lab.
"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for CERN.
CERN
provided the particle accelerator to send neutrinos on a breakneck
454-mile (730-kilometer) trip underground from Geneva to Italy. France's
National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research
collaborated with Italy's Ran Sass National Laboratory for the
experiment, which has no connection to the atomic-smashing Large Hadron
Collider, which is also located at CERN.
Gillies told The
Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that
"they are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've
done and really scrutinize it in great detail."
That will be
necessary, because Einstein's special relativity theory underlies
"pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a
theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment.
"It has worked perfectly up until now." And part of that theory is that
nothing is faster than the speed of light.
CERN reported that a
neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab in
Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists
calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the
difference statistically significant.
Given the enormous
implications of the find, they spent months checking and rechecking
their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment.
A
team at Fermilab had similar faster-than-light results in 2007. But
that experiment had such a large margin of error that it undercut its
scientific significance.
If anything is going to throw a cosmic
twist into Einstein's theories, it's not surprising that it's the
strange particles known as neutrinos. These are odd slivers of an atom
that have confounded physicists for about 80 years.
The neutrino
has almost no mass, it comes in three different "flavors," may have its
own antiparticle and even has been seen shifting from one flavor to
another while shooting out from the sun, said physicist Phillip Schewe,
communications director at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland.
Fermilab
team spokeswoman Jenny Thomas, a physics professor at the University
College of London, said there must be a "more mundane explanation" for
the European findings. She said Fermilab's experience showed how hard it
is to measure accurately the distance, time and angles required for
such a claim.
Nevertheless, the Fermilab team, which shoots
neutrinos from Chicago to Minnesota, will go back to work immediately to
try to verify or knock down the new findings, Thomas said.
Drew
Baden, chairman of the physics department at the University of Maryland,
said it is far more likely that there are measurement errors or some
kind of fluke. Tracking neutrinos is very difficult, he said.
"This
is ridiculous what they're putting out," Baden said. "Until this is
verified by another group, it's flying carpets. It's cool, but..."
So if the neutrinos are pulling this fast one on Einstein, how can it happen?
Stephen
Parke, head theoretician at the Fermilab, said there could be a cosmic
shortcut through another dimension — physics theory is full of unseen
dimensions — that allows the neutrinos to beat the speed of light.
Indiana
University theoretical physicist Alan Kostelecky says there may be
situations when the background is different in the universe, not
perfectly symmetrical as Einstein says. Those changes in background may
change both the speed of light and the speed of neutrinos.
But that doesn't mean Einstein's theory is ready for the trash heap, he said.
"I
don't think you're going to ever kill Einstein's theory. You can't. It
works," Kostelecky said, adding there are just times when an additional
explanation is needed.
If the European findings are correct, "this would change the idea of how the universe is put together," Columbia's Greene said.
But he added: "I would bet just about everything I hold dear that this won't hold up to scrutiny."
___
Borenstein reported from Washington.
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