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Many physicists had a heart attack when we
got news from Geneva, Switzerland that Einstein
might be wrong. All hell broke loose in the
physics community. Every physicist I know
was taking a position on this hot topic because
relativity is the foundation of modern physics
along with the Quantum Theory.
Now what they found was if you take a beam
of neutrinos from the atom smasher in Geneva,
Switzerland, shoot the beam through the mountains
from Switzerland to Italy over a distance
of 454 miles, the neutrinos out-raced a light
beam by a distance of 60 feet, 60 feet over
a distance of 454 miles. Well, that doesn't
sound like much, but to a physicist this is
a disaster. It means that the foundations
of modern physics have to be called into question.
First, it means that time travel could become
commonplace because as you approach the speed
of light time slows down. If you exceed the
speed of light, time goes backwards. Remember
that scene in Superman One when Lois Lane
dies and Superman goes into outer space and
goes around the planet earth in the opposite
direction; the earth stops and then rotates
in the opposite direction and then, all of
the sudden, Lois Lane springs back to life?
Well, that kind of scenario might be possible
if the speed of light is not so special that
particles can exceed the speed of light, not
to mention that we'll have to recalibrate
everything - the age of the universe, the
age of stars, the distance to the stars, the
basic structure of modern electronics has
to be changed, the GPS, nuclear weapons, all
of that would have to be recalibrated and
rethought through if Einstein's theory of
relativity is wrong.
So what's the solution to the problem? Well
the solution to the problem is obviously they
goofed. They made a mistake. I remember when
I was a grad student years and years ago at
Harvard. My advisor at Harvard was Professor
Pound and he the famous Pound-Rebka Experiment
where they shot a light beam from the top
of Jefferson Hall to the bottom of Jefferson
Hall. Now, there was a rival group, a rival
group that also did the same experiment and
they had to calculate the speed of light in
the process. They found that the speed of
light actually rose in the morning, peaked
at noontime. Then the speed of light began
to slow down at dinnertime and reached a minimum
at midnight. Well, this was shocking. The
speed of light, which governs the universe
all of the sudden is wedded to lunchtime and
dinnertime. So what's the problem? The problem
was that this counter experiment, this rival
experiment, was done outdoors, and the sensors
were temperature-dependent, and of course
it's warmer at lunchtime and colder at midnight.
Well, Professor Pound's experiment was done
indoors and therefore, didn't have that kind
of variation.
The lesson here is: systematic errors creep
into very delicate calculations. Some people
think they found the source of the error.
How do we know that from Switzerland to Italy
the distance is 454 miles? Well, you use GPS,
right? Obvious, but GPS is a relativistic
system. It uses relativity and some physicists
have claimed that they mis-calibrated the
distance from the sensors to the satellite
and satellite back down to Italy, a triangle;
that one of the lengths of the triangle was
mis-calibrated in the process of doing this
experiment.
Now, there is another counter example. Back
in 1987, light from a gigantic supernova in
the Magellanic Clouds hit the planet earth
and, simultaneously with that, neutrinos were
detected in gigantic neutrino detectors in
Japan. So we had a double whammy - light from
a supernova right near the Milky Way Galaxy
hitting the earth at the same time as neutrinos
from a galaxy tens of thousands of light years
from the earth.
So here's the rub. Why should we believe this
CERN experiment over a distance of 454 miles
when over a distance of tens of thousands
of light years neutrinos and light beams hit
the earth at the same time? That's why many
physicists believe that they must have made
a systematic error someplace and the weak
link, the weak link in this whole chain of
reasoning is the GPS system, and the GPS system
itself is a relativistic system. So in some
sense they're using relativity to defeat relativity
and I think there is something circular about
that.