I'm sure many of you have heard that some physicists in Italy are claiming that they recorded the subatomic particle (nearly zero mass) Neutrino traveling a few nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. This is hard to believe since Einstein predicted in his Special Theory of Relativity that no non-zero mass particle could travel that fast as it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate it to that point. The most plausible explanation is that the scientists made a mistake or that their super computers were off. Another (far fetched) theory is that the neutrinos are in fact traveling faster than C because they are on the other side of the light barrier and are essentially traveling backwards in time. This would be a violation of causality, in that theoretically if the particles were on the other side of the light barrier then the effect of them being launched from the particle accelerator would happen before the actual launch. There is also a theory that basically says that the neutrinos are simply taking a trip through a higher dimension and then plopping back into our dimension. ( I think I understand that theory less than any other one, as it requires a pretty sophisticated understanding on String Theory) At any rate the Great Nicola Tesla may or may not have predicted this, depending on how you see his quote, "All of my investigations seem to point to the conclusion that they are small particles, each carrying so small a charge that we are justified in calling them neutrons. They move with great velocity, exceeding that of light.”
I'm a business major and very little knowledge on any of the science that goes into this, I just find it endlessly intriguing. It's sort of a hobby of mine ever since my first astronomy class a couple years ago. I would love to hear any thoughts any of you have on this. I'm not the smartest person in the world so if you have a great understanding of these concepts please don't be an ass about it. As I said I just love reading and discussing this type of science.
