Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Superluminal Neutrino Result Caused by Faulty Connection?

Superluminal Neutrino Result Caused by Faulty Connection? | Life, Unbounded, Scientific American Blog Network.

"Although still awaiting full confirmation, a breaking news report in Science (and Nature, see below) indicates that the measurement of an apparently faster-than-light travel time for muon-neutrinos generated at CERN and detected at the Gran Sasso laboratory – which hit the world headlines back in September 2011 – may have been due to a problematic physical connection between a fiber-optic cable and an electronics card in a computer.

The rumor is that when this connection was tightened and the signal timing through the cable re-evaluated it matched precisely the 60 nano-second discrepancy that had been attributed to possible superluminal neutrino speeds. Since the cable fed data from a GPS unit used in timing the neutrino passage, this would be a critical problem. It is also possible that the GPS was providing incorrect timestamp information."

Well, I'll sleep easier. :)

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