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Leaders of controversial neutrino experiment step down
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The supposedly super-speedy neutrinos may have slowed, but they haven't stopped creating turmoil in the physics world. Two leaders of the OPERA experiment behind the controversial result stepped down this week.
Spokesperson Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern in Switzerland turned in his resignation on 29 March, and physics coordinator Dario Autiero of the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyon, France, resigned on 30 March. Both cited tensions within the collaboration as the reason for their departures.
In September, the OPERA collaboration reported that they had measured neutrinos making the 730-kilometre trip from CERN in Switzerland to the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than if they had been travelling at light speed.
If it panned out, the result would have turned much of modern physics on its head, contradicting Einstein's theory of special relativity and opening the theoretical door to exotic possibilities like extra dimensions and time travel.
The result, however, seems to be down to experimental error. OPERA announced last month that they had found a malfunctioning clock and a leaky fibre-optic cable that could explain part or all of the neutrinos' extra speed. And another experiment in the same underground cavern in Italy, ICARUS, re-did the same measurement and saw no faster-than-light speeds.
"We don't think anymore that the neutrinos were superluminal," says OPERA team member Luca Stanco of Italy's National Physics Institute.
More in link.
[link to www.newscientist.com]
Hmmm.
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