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| Now Einstein really has the right to laugh... |
Last September, neutrinos reportedly traveled from Switzerland to Italy faster than light would. This meant that either there was an error in the expirement, or that Einstein's theories were incorrect. Because it seemed so unlikely that Einstein would be wrong, scientists assumed that there was an error in the testing. But when CERN repeated the experiment 20 times and got the same results, that almost crossed off the idea of testing error, so it seemed as if Einstein's theories were false. Yet, scientists all over the world couldn't find any error in the theories. Even CERN's director of research, Sergio Bertolucci, jokingly said, "I have difficulty to believe it, because nothing arrives in Italy ahead of time."
But now, our explanation is finally here; a loose fiber optic cable in the system caused one of the atomic clocks to produce incorrect readings of the neutrino's time. However, we shouldn't jump to conclusions as many people did when the reports first came out; this report hasn't been confirmed, only one source, ScienceInsider, has mentioned it. Apparently, CERN's researchers will retest with properly hooked clocks, and this should tell for sure whether the results were in fact due to a loose wire. Talk about overthinking it...
