‘Einstein would have loved it‘

Cern made the results of its so-called Opera experiments public last Friday. Physicists worldwide reacted with a mixture of excitement and disbelieve.

“This result comes as a complete surprise,” says Opera spokesperson, Antonio Ereditato, of the University of Bern, in a press release. “After many months of studies and cross checks we have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement.” Cern asked other researchers from, for instance, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the United States and the neutrino observatory Super-Kamiokande in Japan to carry out independent measurements.

“We will probably get the results from these other research groups in about half a years time,” says Harry van der Graaf, of the National Institute for Subatomic Physics (Nikhef), who teaches elementary particle physics in Delft.

Van der Graaf, who is an expert in detection instruments for sub atomic particles and a regular visitor to Cern, says he looked closely at Opera’s experimental set up and could not find the tiniest flaw. “The set up is airtight,” he says. “Most physicists think that an error was made somewhere, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the findings turn out to be correct. This might then very well be the most important discovery in physics since Michelson and Morley discovered in the late 19th century that light moves at constant and invariant speed.”

Would this mean that Van der Graaf would no longer teach Einsteins theory of relativity? That theory, which assumes that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light and that light moves at a constant speed, would then obviously be false.

“Einstein’s theories would not end up in the waste bin,” the researcher says. “After all, they explain many observations in cosmology correctly. But we will need to give a twist to the theories. And maybe we will be able to develop new theories that better explain gravity and missing dark matter and dark energy. I’m sure Einstein would have found this discovery, if true, fantastic.”

If it is possible to travel faster than the speed of light, would time travel then also be possible? You hear this question a lot in the media. Van der Graaf thinks it’s silly to extrapolate these phenomena to our real world. After all, we are not made of neutrinos. Time machines will always be science fiction.

Still, if the measurements are confirmed, they will dramatically change our view of physics. “But physicists agreed not to speculate,” says Van der Graaf. Which is perhaps easier said than done.

Met stomheid geslagen was deze jonge bezoeker aan het Science Centre door de c,mm,n, de futuristische auto die een antwoord moet zijn op het mobiliteitsprobleem. Het Science Centre, dat begin september de deuren opende en een wereld vol wetenschap en techniek huisvest, werd tijdens de Wetenschapsdag in de herfstvakantie druk bezocht door de doelgroep, jongeren tussen 8 en 18 jaar.