Do neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light? It appears the answer may "no" after all. The OPERA Collaboration recently announced that they have found two potential issues with their experiment that may have introduced errors into the calculation of the neutrino time-of-flight. First, a fiber optic cable connected to one of the GPS receivers was found to transmit differently depending on the orientation of its connection. A delayed transimission may have resulted from a bad orientation, which would work in the direction of reducing the measured neutrino speed, potentially bringing the measured speed into agreement with the speed of light. The second experimental issue found had to do with a miscalibrated timing oscillator, which would actually work in the opposite direction, increasing the measured neutrino speed. In my mind, it seems likely that when the experiment is repeated with the cable properly oriented and the oscillator calibrated (or the error accounted for), the measured speed of the neutrinos will be consistent with the speed of light in a vacuum. However, until we have experimental confirmation (indications are that this may come in May), we can't say that the OPERA anomaly is gone quite yet.
For initial coverage and amusing quotes, see here,
here, and
here.
Update: More details, along with an official statement from the OPERA Collaboration, are available here.
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