(Reuters) - An international team of scientists has recorded neutrino particles travelling faster than the speed of light, a spokesman for the researchers said on Thursday -- in what could be a challenge to one of the fundamental rules of physics.

Antonio Ereditato, who works at the CERN particle physics centre on the Franco-Swiss border, told Reuters that measurements over three years showed the neutrinos moving 60 nanoseconds quicker than light over a distance of 730 km between Geneva and Gran Sasso, Italy.

"We have high confidence in our results. But we need other colleagues to do their tests and confirm them," he said.

If confirmed, the discovery would overturn a key part of Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that nothing in the universe can travel faster than light. (Reporting by Robert Evans, editing by Tom Miles)

Well, could neutrinos carry information? For what little I know is really hard to interact with neutrinos so I would guess there are no way to accelerate them even further or make them carry information.

Reuters doesn't say whether the neutrinos were moving faster than light in a medium, or faster than light would move over the same distance in a vacuum. Crucial difference, from a "does this contradict relativity" perspective.

A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos -- tiny particles that pervade the cosmos -- were fired over a period of 3 years from CERN toward Gran Sasso 730 (500 miles) km away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.

Light would have covered the distance in around 2.4 thousandths of a second, but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds -- or 60 billionths of a second -- less than light beams would have taken.

They do here


I think they mean that light (on vacuum) would traveled those 730 kilometers in 2.4 thousandths of a second, but the neutrinos took 60 nanoseconds. However they explicitly don't say in vacuum, but I don't think that they will overlook that little detail if are daring to make it public already.

No, they still do not clarify that. Your pardon, if I do not trust popular media's science reporting.

No, they still do not clarify that. Your pardon, if I do not trust popular media's science reporting.

However I think is implied, I don't think they are measuring the speed of light on a medium made of solid rock, or even worst one randomly made up by water rock and air. That would be silly don't you think?

A total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos -- tiny particles that pervade the cosmos -- were fired over a period of 3 years from CERN toward Gran Sasso 730 (500 miles) km away, where they were picked up by giant detectors.

I'm skeptical of their claims. *

Puzzling results from Cern, home of the LHC, have confounded physicists - because it appears subatomic particles have exceeded the speed of light.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second early.

The result - which threatens to upend a century of physics - will be put online for scrutiny by other scientists.

In the meantime, the group says it is being very cautious about its claims.

"We tried to find all possible explanations for this," said report author Antonio Ereditato of the Opera collaboration.

"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," he told BBC News.

"When you don't find anything, then you say 'Well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinise this.'"

Caught speeding?
The speed of light is the Universe's ultimate speed limit, and much of modern physics - as laid out in part by Albert Einstein in his special theory of relativity - depends on the idea that nothing can exceed it.

Thousands of experiments have been undertaken to measure it ever more precisely, and no result has ever spotted a particle breaking the limit.

But Dr Ereditato and his colleagues have been carrying out an experiment for the last three years that seems to suggest neutrinos have done just that.

Neutrinos come in a number of types, and have recently been seen to switch spontaneously from one type to another.

The team prepares a beam of just one type, muon neutrinos, sending them from Cern to an underground laboratory at Gran Sasso in Italy to see how many show up as a different type, tau neutrinos.

In the course of doing the experiments, the researchers noticed that the particles showed up a few billionths of a second sooner than light would over the same distance.

The team measured the travel times of neutrino bunches some 15,000 times, and have reached a level of statistical significance that in scientific circles would count as a formal discovery.

But the group understands that what are known as "systematic errors" could easily make an erroneous result look like a breaking of the ultimate speed limit, and that has motivated them to publish their measurements.

"My dream would be that another, independent experiment finds the same thing - then I would be relieved," Dr Ereditato said.

But for now, he explained, "we are not claiming things, we want just to be helped by the community in understanding our crazy result - because it is crazy".

"And of course the consequences can be very serious."

So are they; enough so that they aren't actually CLAIMING anything. This BBC piece makes that more clear (bolding added for the impatient)

Light traveling 730 kilometers would need 2.4 milliseconds to do so. So if they're right, then they have broadcast neutrinos faster than light. I'm skeptical of their claims. *

Incidentally, I highly doubt that they managed to create a tube of vacuum 730 kilometers in length without anyone having heard of it before. They're probably sending those neutrinos through rock and air, but that doesn't matter, since the speed is still greater than would have been if they were traveling through vacuum.

So shove your high horse bullfuckery.

I didn't mean to come off high-horsed, just posting an article that highlights their caution.

So counter-fuck you for misunderstanding!

I'd really like to see the actual work once it goes online. Would answer a lot of these little questions.

The distance between detector and emitter almost certainly isn't an issue; even with my GPS and their facility's blueprints they could know to within about a meter; the 60 nanoseconds reported is a difference of 18 meters for C in a vacuum. Beyond that I imagine there would be measurements done with other neutrinos to establish an even more precise baseline... or something.

As a side note, neutrinos have clocked >C before, but there was enough of an error window to write it off without much fuss. This might tell us we have a surprisingly poor understanding of neutrino production/detection.

I can see how the time of emission is crucial given such short time intervals, but does the uncertainty in the distance within the 1 km emitter/receiver really make the experiment that inaccurate with such a huge distance (730 km) between the emitter and receiver?

The distance between detector and emitter almost certainly isn't an issue; even with my GPS and their facility's blueprints they could know to within about a meter; the 60 nanoseconds reported is a difference of 18 meters for C in a vacuum.