Einstein’s theory questioned as speed of light is broken again

And after running the modified follow-up test 20 times,they recorded exactly the same results as before,the Daily Mail reported

According to Albert Einstein’s 106-year-old theory of special relativity,nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum because its particles have no mass.  

By contrast,neutrinos — said to be ‘ghostly’ because they can travel through anything — have a very small mass.

Their apparently record-breaking speed raises a host of possibilities straight out of science fiction stories.

One explanation for the results could be the existence of other dimensions that provided the neutrinos with a shortcut — a scenario that would leave Einstein’s theory intact.

Tested and re-tested for six months before it was announced,the initial finding shocked the science world in September.

But it was greeted with scepticism as experts raised questions about every aspect of the physicists’ equipment and methodology. 

Critics of the first test said that running all 15,000 neutrinos at once meant there could be errors in the measurement that said they had beaten the speed of light by 60 nanoseconds (or billionths of a second).

Now,the researchers claimed they have used a more accurate method for the second trial by sending shorter bunches of the tiny neutrinos with larger gaps in between.

Nuclear Physics at Gran Sasso,said the scientists were now ‘more confident’ about the result,but urged other laboratories to join his in repeating the test.

However,many experts still remain unconvinced.

Jim Al-Khalili,of the University of Surrey’s physics department,who has offered to eat his boxer shorts on live television if neutrinos really can travel faster than light,said,“I am not yet ready to get out my knife and fork.

“The results have only dealt with some possible errors. There are still a number of other possible errors and uncertainties that they are working on ruling out.

“Ideally,the experiment would have to be done somewhere else entirely to try to verify the controversial result that these tiny particles really are going faster than light,in case there is still a systemic problem with this particular experiment at Cern,” he said.