“Drivers license and proof of insurance, please,” is the way it often begins. Specular
glints of sunlight carom from mirrored sunglasses. Busted for speeding, think it can’t
happen to you? It supposedly happened to muon neutrinos, proceeding from
Switzerland to Italy. In my Italian travels, speed-demons seemed to be of little interest to
authorities. But the cognoscenti recognized that never before had the implications of the
exhibition of speed — superluminal speed — been so profound. Alas, last week heads
rolled, OPERA collaboration heads. Antonio Ereditato stepped down as chief of the
OPERA experiment along with Dario Autiero, after their findings were debunked and
following a vote of no-confidence by leaders of groups within the collaboration.
A Night at OPERA
You may recall that 732 kilometers (454 miles) from CERN,
Europe’s high-energy physics research epicenter, there exists an Italian nuclear physics
Institute possessing an enormous neutrino detector called OPERA. Traveling at the
velocity of light, designated ‘c’ and equal to 2.99792 x108 meters per second (186,282
miles per second), the time of flight from CERN to OPERA is 0.00244 seconds, about
the length of time a tennis ball when struck forcibly resides on a racquet’s strings. Both
the Special and General formulations of Einstein’s Relativity Theory require that nothing
surpass the velocity of light traveling in a vacuum, much less traveling under the Swiss
and Italian Alps down into an Italian cave— So imagine the surprise of OPERA scientists
when neutrinos appeared to arrive a whopping 6x10-8 seconds (0.00000006 seconds)
faster than would have photons, quanta of light!
Gentlemen, Synchronize Your Watches
Until recently, there was a furor over the possibility that Einstein’s Relativity Theory may
need an upgrade (Relativity 2.0?) or need to be scrapped altogether. After all, why is it
called relativity? Is it because it describes a set of transformations between bodies in
relative motion? Maybe because the transformations demonstrate that when bodies are
in relative motion, space varies, time varies, space-time varies, seemingly everything
varies relative to the magnitude of c and the fact that it is the ultimate speed limit for our
observable universe. After the controversial measurements were disclosed, a kerfuffle
raged with eminent physicists, the blogosphere, and metaphysicians all weighing in on
why the results demonstrating superluminal speed were (un)true. The physics establishment, composed mostly of the former, enumerated all of the potential sources
of error in the measurements, and they were legion: neutrino production detection delay,
accuracy of the measurement of the distance from CERN to OPERA, and more.
Apparently, clocks at the two labs that were not truly synchronized were the culprits.
Beam Me Up, Hendrik
The possibilities were that neutrinos travel below, exactly equal to, or above c. Should
the first two possibilities have prevailed, go back to sleep, physics, and by extension our
understanding of the physical world, would remain unchanged. But, had the neutrino’s
speed exceeded c, that would have been interesting. In that case, all of the solutions to
the Hendrik Lorentz transformations, which have been verified to describe our physical
reality, would be physically incomprehensible.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth ... Einstein
Pray thee, why so mum, CERN scientists? Few comments were uttered by the
experimenters, regarding the profound implications of their neutrino velocity
measurements. We know they can talk, holding forth endlessly on the grandeur of
quantifying the God Particle, almost— The metaphysicians, in stark contrast, had much
to say: Here is mathematical, Einsteinian proof, in the form of undeniable imaginary
roots to the Lorentz transformations, of man’s ability to transcend the mundane physical
world sold to us by stodgy scientists. Possibilities for time travel through wormholes,
astral projection, and, yes, teletransportation, to name a few, were proclaimed by avant-
garde thinkers. Extraphotonic velocities do not invalidate Einstein’s Relativity Theory,
they claimed, but enable it to embrace a space much larger than the physical one we
know. Had they been correct, some of us would have considered trading in our
credentials as quantum mechanics for dilithium crystal expertise.
About Dr. Michael T. Gamble
Dr. Gamble is a former staff member of the physics division of the Los Alamos National
Laboratory. He holds degrees in nuclear and mechanical engineering, and was a
postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also the author
of the high-tech thriller Zeroscape.
