Mr Einstein, Were You Wrong??

Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to be run again:

Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to rerun their experiment in a different way. This will address criticisms and allow the physicists to shore up their analysis as much as possible before submitting it for publication. Dr Sergio Bertolucci said it was vital not to "fool around" given the staggering implications of the result. So they are doing all they can to rule out more pedestrian explanations. They have run the experiment thousands of times and wll run it thousands more with some modifications.

Physicists working on the Opera experiment announced the perplexing findings last month. Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than light would have. The speed of light is regarded as the Universe's ultimate speed limit. Nothing can exceed  the speed of light (or so we believe). Outlined first by James Clerk Maxwell and then by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity, much of modern physics relies on the idea that nothing travels faster than light.

For many, the most comforting explanation is that some repeated "systematic error" has so far eluded the experimenters. Since September, more than 80 scientific papers about the finding have been  written about it. Most propose theoretical solutions for the observation; a few claim to find problems with the experiment..

Dr Bertolucci, the director of research at Cern, told BBC News: "In the last few days we have started to send a different time structure of the beam to Gran Sasso. "This will allow Opera to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematic problems."

The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at Cern. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth's crust to Italy.

Originally, Cern fired the protons in a long pulse lasting 10 microseconds (10 millionths of a second).

The neutrinos showed up 60 nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) earlier than light would have over the same distance.

But some physicists say that any wrong assumptions made when relating these data sets could produce a misleading result. This should be addressed by the new measurements, in which protons are sent in a series of short bursts - lasting just one or two nanoseconds, thousands of times shorter - with a large gap (roughly 500 nanoseconds) in between each burst.

Writing on his blog, Prof Strassler, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: "It's like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn; in the latter case you have to figure out exactly when the horn starts and stops, but in the former you just hear each click and then it's already over."

"More than a century ago, Michelson and Morley measured the speed of light in the direction Earth was moving and in the opposite direction. They found the speed was equal in both directions." This result helped to spur the development of the radical new theory of special relativity.

Sceintists in Gran Sasso, the US and Japan will also test the observations. It is likely to be several months before they report back.
Hang in there Mr Einstein. Perhaps you were right. The jury is still out.