"Help debunk: "Researchers at CERN break The Speed of Light”

[Silvestru]

Hello forum,

I have many friends that love science but they believe a lot of pseudoscience as well. I see this article popping all over my feed.

I read it, there is not much data so it's not so clear but still...

Please share your thoughts on this...

Quote

Scientists said on Thursday they recorded particles travelling faster than light - a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's fundamental laws of the universe. Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the international group of researchers, saidthat measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

 

http://www.thescinewsreporter.com/2018/04/break-researchers-at-cern-break-speed.html

Hope this isn't an April fools joke

[koti]

Well since its piublished on April 1st and its a ridiculous claim it looks like an April fools gag  

„neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy” <— this should trigger your red light, lol  

Theres also an April Fools tag at the bottom of the article, that might be useful too  

 

Edited April 2, 2018 by koti

[Silvestru]

Haha, I missed that, to be honest I came here ASAP when I saw this crap.  Didn't take all things into consideration.

Thanks koti. I can now drink my coffee and wake up.

[swansont]

The experiment underlying this is real, and though I'm not sure if the names have been changed, there was a superluminal result from neutrinos at Gran Sasso. "neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy" is a reality, not a red-light trigger.

But the result was due to faulty calibration. An optical fiber connection was loose, and this messed up their detection and gave a false delay to a signal, making it appear the neutrinos moved faster than c.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/06/once-again-physicists-debunk-faster-light-neutrinos

[koti]

3 minutes ago, swansont said:

 "neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy" is a reality, not a red-light trigger.

Ha, interesting...I visited CERN and wasn’t aware they pumped particles to Italy, +1. I did read about that calibration error resulting in erroneous data somewhere though. Good April fools prank anyway  

16 minutes ago, Silvestru said:

Thanks koti. I can now drink my coffee and wake up.

There was the coffee causing cancer thing all over my feed yesterday  

[Strange]

It looks like someone has resurrected(*) the old story as an April Fool's joke.

(*) Doubly appropriate as it is also Easter!

I seem to remember there was a bit of scandal and some resignations over this because it turned out that some senior people knew what the problem was but kept it quiet to gain more publicity. (Or something.)

[swansont]

3 hours ago, Strange said:

It looks like someone has resurrected(*) the old story as an April Fool's joke.

(*) Doubly appropriate as it is also Easter!

I seem to remember there was a bit of scandal and some resignations over this because it turned out that some senior people knew what the problem was but kept it quiet to gain more publicity. (Or something.)

IIRC, someone in charge, who declared they had checked all of the possible systematics, resigned. Checking that the fiber optic cables were properly connected was an embarrassingly fundamental error for doing a proper calibration.