Back to Newton?
Albert Einstein had to develop a separate 'special theory' of relativity that had an absolute limit as the speed of light.
It was Albert Einstein, no less, who proposed more than 100 years ago that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light.But last night it emerged that the man who laid the foundations for the laws of nature may have been wrong.
The science world was left in shock when workers at the world’s largest physics lab announced they had recorded subatomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light
If the findings are proven to be accurate, they would overturn one of the pillars of the Standard Model of physics, which explains the way the universe and everything within it works.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity, proposed in 1905, states that nothing in the universe can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. But researchers at the CERN lab near Geneva claim they have recorded neutrinos, a type of tiny particle, travelling faster than the barrier of 186,282 miles (299,792 kilometers) per second.
The results have so astounded researchers that American and Japanese scientists have been asked to verify the results before they are confirmed as a discovery.
Speed of light broken - an expert's view
If CERN scientists are correct in claiming they have observed particles travelling faster than the speed of light it would fundamentally change our understanding of the laws of physics, experts say.
Prof Jenny Thomas, of University College London, says the claims, if proven true, would call into question our very understanding of physics and the universe.
She said: "It would turn everything on its head. It is too awful to think about.
"The basic thing it that would be questioned is that there is an absolute speed limit which is the basis of special relativity and that is a huge building block of modern physics.
"It permeates everything to do with how we have modelled the universe and everything. It would be very hard to predict what the effects would be."
Special relativity is integral to the understanding of particle accelerators and the creation of particle beams, which are of crucial importance in fields like medicine and engineering, she said.
It could even be that the most famous equation of all time, E=mc2, turns out to be incorrect because it is based on the law of special relativity, Prof Thomas said.
Before any conclusions can be drawn, the CERN team's results will be checked by scientists across the globe including at Fermilab near Chicago, where a similar experiment known as Minos is based.
Prof Thomas – the co-spokesperson for the Minos project – said the team had thrown up similar results several years ago but had discounted them because the possible margin of error was too high.
She said: "Our errors were rather large so we dismissed it. Nothing is further from your belief than that the results might be correct.
"When I heard about the Cern results my first thought was that they must be wrong, there must be something they have not taken into account."
Potential errors could occur in the measurement of distance between the point the particle was created and where it was detected; the time it took to travel from one point to the other; or in the structure of the accelerator which the whole measurement relies upon.
Prof Thomas added: "I think everyone is sceptical. The scientists themselves have admitted they are sceptical but they cannot see what they have done wrong.
"We will repeat our experiment with higher precision, hopefully in the next six months."
The Fermilab team will then begin a second stage of their experiment, called Minos Plus, which is even more similar to the Cern trial and will deliver results accurate to one nanosecond, she said.
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