Too soon to get excited about it. Verifications need to be done.
If it's true then we'll all know about it because that's big news.
If it's false it will just vanish from the news like cold fusion did in the 80s.
Indeed, I wonder why, if it can go faster than light, it only chooses to go faster than light by such an insignificant amount; seems to be an error to me.
If it's not an error, we'll just replace speedOfLight with speedOfNeutrino and everything will be fine and valid. And also that British dude will eat his shorts.
If it's not an error, we'll just replace speedOfLight with speedOfNeutrino and everything will be fine and valid.
If it does not turn out to be an error in measuring the distance traveled, the time of flight, or the exact time of neutrino creation; then you would have to look at what other phenomena may explain the results before concluding that the speed of light is either wrong or not a limiting factor.
And also that British dude will eat his shorts.
Personally I think the shorts of Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE are safe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/9598802.stm
I want it to have been an error because I don't want Einstein to have been wrong (though I would love to see Professor Al-Khalili eat his shorts). Then again, it would be pretty exciting if it was proven true, since this would be a massive breakthrough in physics. I'll settle for the discovery of the graviton or Higgs boson, though...
But just because the Neutrino got to its destination faster than expected doesn't mean that it traveled faster than the speed of light, it could have took a short cut through a different dimension.
Well Albert Einstein showed us that Isaac Newton didn't get everything exactly right. I see no reason to believe that Albert Einstein got everything exactly right either.
So I can't really have an opinion on what may or may not have been observed regarding those neutrinos. But my prejudice is decidedly with Einstein. I see why there is a speed-of-light limit for everything we currently understand. Although I am not convinced that we currently understand as much as we sometimes think we do.
Prediction No. 11 (2003): Subquantum kinetics predicts that an electron shock discharge should produce coinciding electric and gravity potential waves that travel faster than the speed of light and that the speed of these superluminal waves at any given point in time should depend on the electric potential gradient of the discharge (LaViolette, Subquantum Kinetics, p. 130).
[...]
Verification (2008): The prediction with respect to the superluminal speed of gravity potential component of such waves was verified qualitatively. Previously, Dr. Podkletnov had told LaViolette that he and Dr. Modanese had measured the speed of the pulses to be between 63 and 64 times the speed of light. In January of 2008, LaViolette asked Podkletnov whether the concrete smashing pulses produced by the steeper electric field gradients traveled much faster than the pendulum deflecting pulses. Podkletnov concurred and said that they had determined that these stronger pulses traveled at least several thousand times the speed of light.
If near-speed-of-light moth flies around a lamp, the shadow it drops on the walls of the room travels faster than light. If a bee sitting on the wall notices the moth's shadow passing nearby and sends a message (by dancing or so) to another bee sitting on the same wall nearby, on the path of the moving shadow, that another bee would *first* notice the shadow, and then notice the signals sent by the first bee. Einstein said only that information cannot move faster than light, not that anything cannot. He also predicted there might be particles moving faster than light - maybe neutrinos are those particles.
The key question is, can neutrinos be used to transfer information and can they be slowed down below the speed of light? If not, then the observation is not a threat to modern physics.
What about entanglement? Can that be used to send messages across infinite distances in zero time (since changing the spin of one particle instantly (literally instantly) changes that of the entangled one)? With e-mail, SMS and telephones it seems like you're talking to someone and they're replying instantly, but that's only because you're so close together. If we could send messages with entanglement, you could be on the other side of the universe and the message would be received instantly.
Sorry to be just going off and correcting people but...
Indeed, I wonder why, if it can go faster than light, it only chooses to go faster than light by such an insignificant amount; seems to be an error to me.
You can't honestly believe that the neutrino 'choose' to go only slightly faster than the speed of light, and for what purpose? So that it was more difficult for us humans to detect?
LHC is sort-of a tunnel
The LHC is something of a tunnel, but the neutrinos from this experiment didn't go through that tunnel, they just went through the ground.