But University of Bern's Antonio Ereditato—spokesperson for the 160-member OPERA team—says that the experiment is "a straightforward time-of-flight measurement." It was repeatable, so they couldn't ignore it because that would be dishonest: "[T]he consequences can be very serious [...] We are forced to say something [...] We have high confidence in our results. But we need other colleagues to do their tests and confirm them."What I love about science is that it has all these Easter Eggs, just waiting to be found.
Hat tip to the Althouse blog.
Regards — Cliff
The speed of light has never been claimed as an absolute except by those whose comfort level demands stasis. Quantum physics let the genie out of the bottle and now, nearly a century later, the frontier has been expanded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. The discoveries in the nano world over the past decade have been astounding....and the newest particle accelerator in Cern provides us some "rudimentary" tools to (as is proposed in the Star Trek intro) go where no man has gone before.
ReplyDeleteThe only seeming constant for "modern" man is the unbelievable amount that we don't know....and that we don't know that we don't know.
The search continues.....more eggs are out there.
Maybe one day science will provide "proof" that the claims of religion are quite valid.