Student follow-up: 186,000 miles per second. It’s the law, isn’t it?
Reports a few weeks ago that CERN researchers had measured neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light have been exaggerated in many outlets. One columnist in the small-town daily where I live even stated it as fact that the old light-speed limit had been debunked. She was arguing how you shouldn’t believe everything scientists say is true, especially global warming.
As responsible articles made clear back then, even the CERN researchers were doubtful of their finding and were not prepared to believe they had made no errors.
Interestingly at least two college dailies have interviewed their local scientists on the speedy neutrino matter.
The MIT student paper, The Tech, has a piece by Stephanie Holden, a brain and cognitive science student, giving some strong evidence to doubt the finding. She quotes MIT Nobelist Frank Wilczek saying that the main evidence contradicting the neutrino finding is what happened when astronomers spotted a 1987 supernova. Its neutrinos, which supernovae emit before flaring brightly, arrived just hours before the light. Had they traveled at the speed observed in the CERN experiment, they should have arrived years earlier.
At the Cornell Daily Sun student Nicholas St.Fleur appears to have conducted a Q&A by e-mail with several members of the faculty. They discuss the implications and, like Wilczek, bring up the 1987 supernova as powerful evidence against the CERN result. One Cornell prof says that if the new findings are right, the neutrinos should have been detected in 1983. Alas, St.Fleur queries a plant biologist who takes the opportunity to tout his personal theory of relativity.
-Boyce Rensberger
