In September of 2011 the truly astounding results of a 6-year-long experiment (called OPERA) involving 190 physicists was reported; the results were confirmed in a re-test in November 2011. What was this finding from the OPERA team that stood the world of physics on its head?
The experiment sought to measure the speed of neutrinos passing under the Alps − from the accelerator at CERN in Switzerland to a lab in Gran Sasso, Italy − for a distance of some 731 km:
A neutrino is a tiny particle, about 1/10,000th the size of a proton, or 1/5th the size of an electron. It has been verified to travel at the speed of light, even though it has a tiny mass. This, of course, confuses the old physics because if it has mass, it is not − by Special Relativity − supposed to be able to travel at the speed of light. Luckily The New Physics model resolves this issue by concluding that, since there is no internal structure in such a small bubble in space, it can indeed travel at the speed of light even though it has mass. (See blog post 15 for more on this issue.)
The astounding result of the OPERA experiment was that the neutrinos arrived in Gan Sasso 57.8 ± 7.8 nanoseconds (billionths of a second) faster than a light photon would cover the same distance in space! But the theory of Special Relativity − verified in many experiments − is founded on the hypothesis that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
You can’t begin to imagine the furor these results caused throughout the world of physics! This will not be the first nor the last time that experimental physicists will be pressured to recant their findings because theoretical physics does not “permit” the observed phenomenon to exist. In May 2012 the team running the experiment retracted their findings, citing “a loose optical cable” as the culprit.
But theoretical physicists ignore experimental results at their peril! Rather than throw out 6 years of exceptionally refined experimental effort by 190 world-renowned physicists, let’s instead apply The New Physics model to this situation.
The simple fact is that travelling through the earth’s crust is not travelling through a vacuum. We mentioned in a couple of previous posts that light travelling through space is limited in speed by the permittivity and permeability of space. But we also hypothesize that inside of a particle like a proton or a neutron there is no space. So light should pass through a particle instantaneously.
It turns out that if you add up all the nuclei that a neutrino would encounter between CERN and Gran Sasso, and deduct the time for the neutrino to pass through those nuclei, then the amount of time gained on the passage is 56.2 nanoseconds. That is well within the 57.8 ± 7.8 nanoseconds reported in the OPERA experiment.
The wave portion of the neutrino passing through the nuclei might look something like the following (although the curved surface of the neutrino first quantum level wave-front shown below is exaggerated; at proper scale (about 9,000 times larger wavelength than a proton) it would really look like a vertical line):
So you can see that although nothing can travel faster than light in a vacuum, a wave can travel faster than light though a solid.
Well, there’s a counter-intuitive result if we ever saw one! In order to see if this is correct, we would “only” need to perform the experiment at a larger distance. At twice the distance, assuming the density of the earth’s crust remained fairly consistent, we should see twice as much time gained. We say “only” because the equipment used is very costly and sophisticated and definitely not easily moved or replicated. But, the prediction stands.
Does light travel faster through materials than through a vacuum? For a bit more on this, visit the section of Refraction at the end of our paper Solved! Mysteries of Modern Physics (see Papers.)