LHC@home

Scientists at CERN think maybe they have seen neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light.

I've been watching that. How exciting. Whatever they eventually determine, it will add to our knowledge.

"Hawking also described how he discovered that particles could slowly leak out of black holes and release energy.[...]"
http://www.physorg.com/news156450506.html

Can a neutrino slowly going it out of black hole ?
Maybe 60 nanoseconds faster than light...

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As exciting as this is, I think it's far more likely that it was a systematic error that gave a false reading. 60ns? Hmm.

Consider SN 1987A -the supernova that essentially kicked off neutrino astronomy- that was about 168,000 lightyears away. If neutrinos are that much faster than light, we'd expect to see them arrive early by 168,000*(1-1/1.00002464) = about 4.139418 years. And yet, experimentally, that's not what happened. The neutrinos arrived around 3 hours before the light did over a distance of 168,000 lightyears and NOT 4 years sooner.

So you might be wondering "Ok new guy, but the neutrinos still got here first! Explain THAT!" When a supernova occurs, the energy release begins in the core -- it takes time for the shockwave to reach the surface, but neutrinos don't have any such resistance from from the cool shock front and get a few hours head start. That time difference is exactly what we saw, even after all those years of traveling at crazy speeds over crazy distances.

Superluminal particles? I reckon we have yet to find them.

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Quite possibly the slowest laptop associated with the LHC.

The supernova proves those neutrinos did not exceed the speed of light. It does not prove that the neutrinos observed by CERN didn't travel faster than light. The CERN neutrinos may be a new type never seen before. Perhaps they were accelerated in a different way than the supernova neutrinos, a way that pushed them beyond light speed. Not saying CERN has definitely seen superluminal particles, just saying it's too soon to say they made a mistake. It wouldn't surprise me if in the end it gets chalked up to an error.

Cern have posted an update on the FTL Neutrino's.