(MUSIC)
FAITH LAPIDUS: Scientists at the CERN physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, made news last month. They said they measured a subatomic particle, called a neutrino, traveling faster than the speed of light. If this is correct, it violates a main idea of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity.
Patrick Fox works at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, near Chicago, Illinois. He knows a lot about the theory of relativity.
PATRICK FOX: “I have been studying that for years. It is something you use day-to-day.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Patrick Fox explains the reason there is a speed limit for all matter in the universe.
PATRICK FOX: “The only objects that can travel at the speed of light are mass-less things, like light.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: Robert Plunkett is a scientist with the Minos Neutrino Experiment at Fermilab. He says even subatomic particles like neutrinos have a speed limit.
Part of the Minos experiment at Fermilab.
ROBERT PLUNKETT: “The speed of light is the absolute cosmic speed limit for the travel of particles.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: But scientists at CERN say they have recorded a neutrino particle that broke the cosmic speed limit. They carried out an experiment that fired a beam of neutrinos from CERN to Italy’s INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory. The researchers said they observed about fifteen thousand neutrino events. And they said their observations appear to show that the neutrinos traveled faster than light. Light travels at about three hundred thousand kilometers a second.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25