3 Questions: Faster than light?
The news media were abuzz this week with reports of experiments conducted at the Gran Sasso particle detector complex in Italy, apparently showing subatomic particles called neutrinos had traveled from the giant particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, to the Italian detector at a speed just slightly faster than the speed of light — a result that, if correct, would overturn more than a century of accepted physics theory. Professor of Physics Peter Fisher, head of MIT’s Particle and Nuclear Experimental Physics division, answered some questions about these new findings.Q. If this result is confirmed, does it really undermine Einstein’s theory of relativity, as some news reports claim? And if so, is there a theory that’s been proposed that might account for it?A. Einstein’s theory rests on two postulates, one of which is that electromagnetic radiation travels at the same speed (the speed of light, 300,000 kilometers per second) no...