Bob CollinsIf we were more of a science-loving people, maybe this would lead every newscast today:
Einstein proven wrong.
The science community is abuzz today with news from a group of European researchers that neutrinos — sub-atomic particles — travel faster than light. Einstein said nothing can travel faster than light.
If his special theory of relativity is proven incorrect, it means that most everything we think about how the world and universe works might be wrong.
Other scientists, however, are lining up to call “shenanigans” on the claim.
Chang Kee Jung, a neutrino physicist at Stony Brook University, says there’s an error in the calculations somewhere. “I wouldn’t bet my wife and kids because they’d get mad,” he says. “But I’d bet my house.”
“We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing,” Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters. “We now want colleagues to check them independently.”
“This is so huge that the Europeans are asking us to check it. They haven’t done that since the rise of the Third Reich,” Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post jokes.
If it’s true, what does it mean? The researchers aren’t saying. So we turn to the world of science fiction which has long contended that the secret of time travel depends on overcoming the notion that nothing can travel faster than light.
Also, it means we may not don’t need roads, and there’s a possibility you’re dating your mother.
