The author first writes about the facts to get the reader acquainted with the story. She remains skeptical that the neutrinos actually surpassed the speed of light. She gives a specific example from supernova 1987 which had behavior very unlike the neutrinos from CERN. She finishes the article with a quote from Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” She goes on to say that maybe, just maybe these neutrinos went faster than the speed of light. Kelly Oakes is obviously a non-believer for now, but she remains open in the article which in turn keeps the readers mind open to the possibility.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
We're Gonna Go To.. Ludicrous Speed!
I chose to blog about this article because I originally saw the story in the form of a tweet from the Huffington Post that the speed of light had been broken, so I wanted to look into it. The Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN fired neutrinos through an underground system to San Grasso laboratory in Italy, and the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds ahead of their 3 millisecond ETA. This means that they would have had to been traveling faster than the speed of light. Now I don't know a lot about speed of light travel and super synchrotrons, but I do know that the speed of light was never meant to be broken. If that is the case then Einstein was wrong with his theory of relativity.
The author first writes about the facts to get the reader acquainted with the story. She remains skeptical that the neutrinos actually surpassed the speed of light. She gives a specific example from supernova 1987 which had behavior very unlike the neutrinos from CERN. She finishes the article with a quote from Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” She goes on to say that maybe, just maybe these neutrinos went faster than the speed of light. Kelly Oakes is obviously a non-believer for now, but she remains open in the article which in turn keeps the readers mind open to the possibility.
The author first writes about the facts to get the reader acquainted with the story. She remains skeptical that the neutrinos actually surpassed the speed of light. She gives a specific example from supernova 1987 which had behavior very unlike the neutrinos from CERN. She finishes the article with a quote from Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” She goes on to say that maybe, just maybe these neutrinos went faster than the speed of light. Kelly Oakes is obviously a non-believer for now, but she remains open in the article which in turn keeps the readers mind open to the possibility.
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When I first saw this article, my inner sci-fi geek did a cartwheel and I wondered how long it would be until Mass Effect and/or Star Trek become a reality. Or it may just be a mistake. But I hope not.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of freshman year music theory and marching band. The speed of sound, light, and all of that good stuff. It brings me back to when our theory class was standing at both ends of the hallway clapping and seeing how the speed of light is faster than the speed of sound and watching the delay.
ReplyDeleteBryana it reminded me of freshman theory too. I still did't really learn anything, despite the effort to keep things fresh.
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