CERN breaks light speed

When the Large Hadron Collider was first activated, alarmists feared that it could create a black hole under Europe. The apparent observation at CERN of a beam of neutrino particles moving faster than the speed of light could prove even more surprising.

The subatomic particles, so small they can pass through matter, travelled from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso, Italy – a distance of 732km as part of a test. Expected to take three milliseconds, scientists were shocked to find the neutrinos arrive 60 billionths of a second earlier than it would take for light to travel the same distance. Even having applied apparent margins of error – understood to be around 10 billionths of a second – it would appear that neutrinos had achieved the fastest speed witnessed in the universe.

So potentially significant is the finding that scientists from the OPERA team conducting the experiment have offered up their data to counterparts around the world to check their calculations and methods – a sign of the trepidation felt around this discovery.

The potential implications of this discovery are enormous. Primarily, it would disprove Einstein’s special theory of relativity which has been considered a watertight description of the motion and interrelation of all objects in the universe. Widely recognised by the formula E=MC², the theory relies upon the speed of light being a constant and the fastest entity in the universe. If the discovery at CERN proves to be genuine, light speed would lose its status and the theory could be sent to the drawing board. 

This has worried scientists as Einstein’s theory has been seen to be incredibly accurate in describing movement in the universe, from the position of distant stars to the location of communication satellites, and pretty much everything else. Physicists would need to reconcile how this theory appears to accurately describe the universe if neutrinos really can travel faster than light, potentially needing to rethink the nature of space as a uniform vacuum.

Surpassing light speed would also allow for the fantastic to become theoretical reality: time travel. It was previously held that any object travelling faster than the speed of light would experience reality slowing to the point of coming to a halt. Go faster still and the object would break this point and time would start to move backwards. Light speed was considered unattainable in reaction to the suggestion that matter could go back in time. If neutrinos have broken this speed, then there is no reason to suggest they could not – or have not – achieved this. This would require us to completely reconsider the universe in terms of our linear perception of it and take physics to strange, uncertain places.

There is some way to go in establishing the accuracy of CERN’s results. Several member of the OPERA team who conducted the experiment have refused to put their name to the paper that suggested light speed had been broken, requesting further checks before dropping the bombshell. Around the globe, both professional and amateur scientists alike have also been examining the findings, attempting to find fault with the data.

Several suggestions have so far been fielded, from data anomalies relating to the difference of the spread in the neutrino beam at the start and end points of the experiment, to more extravagant theories proposing new dimensions in space through which light may travel at faster speeds than we experience, thereby preserving Einstein’s theory. Nothing so far has derailed the findings but it remains very early days.

As the results of the experiment are analysed, likely ad infinitum, there holds two possibilities. Either one of the fundamental cornerstones of modern physics has just disappeared, or CERN has publicly made an embarrassing error.

Regardless, the news has ignited public interest in physics in a manner rarely seen, with the story carried from scientific journals to tabloid newspaper. If nothing else, the announcement has reignited the wider imagination about the universe we live in. And if it proves true, those imaginations will be necessary to fundamentally rethink the workings of the universe.