Oops! Scientists who claimed to break the speed of light were wrong, and are now chalking up their blunder to a “bad connection.”
In Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, he stated nothing in the entire universe could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. Last year, physicists at CERN claimed to have shown particles could move quicker than the speed of light, shocking the world, and Einstein enthusiasts alike.
However, a glitchy faulty wire proved otherwise.
A report in Science Insider says, “The 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between the fiber optic cable that connects the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos’ flight and an electronic card in a computer.”
How embarrassing.
The original findings claimed CERN was able to use the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, to track neutrinos arriving 60 nanoseconds quicker than the 2.3 milliseconds taken by light. Scientists worldwide agreed the results, if confirmed, would be a game-changer, challenging the fundamental laws of physics.
Scientists at CERN maintain they have, “identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement,” but they remain the physicists who cried wolf, for now.
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Joanna Adams is an intern at Toronto Standard (and ask her about her Oscar picks, because she’ll talk your ear off). Follow her on Twitter at @joannaaadams.
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