Posted by Roger Boylan on Friday, September 23, 2011
According to scientists, neutrinos raced from a particle accelerator at CERN
outside Geneva,
where they were created, to a cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy, a distance
of about 450 miles, about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam to make the same journey
That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 0.0025% (2.5 parts in a
hundred thousand).
If this is a violation of the theory of relativity, it's a big fucking deal indeed, to paraphrase our esteemed Vice-President. Problem is, most of us are so utterly out of our depth we'll have to start looking up the meaning of things like neutrinos and electrons if we're to stand a chance of grasping this.