Friday, September 23, 2011

Strange Particles, neutrinos to be exact, could travel faster than speed of light.

Even after many decades, after theoretical physicist Albert Einstein hypothesized that nothing could travel with a faster speed than the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s), no one has disproved that hypothesis. This hypothesis is now part of the "Special relativistic theory" and has been used in many applications for modern physics that have worked in many applications. As it is a theory, however, many have been studying and researching to prove or disprove it. Though disproving it has been impossible, a famous study from Kamiokande II experiment in Japan of the supernova SN1987A had managed to prove that Einstein’s theory was right. The study compared the speed of light with the speed of neutrinos- Neutrinos are very small particles with undefined mass. However, one finding from CERN laboratory in Switzerland question this Law and maybe it's the end for one of the "most trusted laws discovered by Einstein." Read the article for more info.

For "Biol1010" students, this could be a great example to understand how science differs from non-science arguments. Think about the debate we had about "Scientific claims", "Science vs. Intelligent design".

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