Education

Who Says Particle Physicists Can’t Explain Things With Two Words?

Shortest Scientific Journal Abstract

In 2011, particle physicists were flabbergasted when they discovered that neutrinos could apparently travel faster than light, breaking the universal speed limit proposed by Einstein. Their result, alas, was later proven to be in error.Before the mistake came to light, physicists pondered the implications and looked for ways to confirm the findings. A group from the H.W. Wills Physics Laboratory in Bristol and the Indian Institute of Technology examined the phenomenon in an article in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, entitled, “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?” If you want to spare yourself the scholarly discussion, you can cut right to the article’s abstract, which succinctly and bluntly answered that question: “Probably not.”

superluminal neutrino speedsThe succinct abstract answers the question posed in the article’s title.


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