You cannae change the laws of physics? We just have

IT HAS been the cornerstone of physics since Albert Einstein dreamed up his theory of relativity. But yesterday, scientists were baffled by the results of experiments that appear to show sub-atomic particles travelling faster than the speed of light.

The discovery, at CERN, the world’s leading laboratory for particle research, opens up a world of questions and opportunities. It also undermines Einstein’s 1905 theory that nothing could travel faster than light – an equation he wrote up as E=mc2.

As the international team which conducted the experiments puzzled over what is potentially one of the biggest upsets in history, less rigorous minds turned their attention to the possibility of time travel and visiting distant planets.

Even Professor Alvaro De Rujula, a theoretical physicist at CERN, was not immune to the excitement. He acknowledged that if the readings proved correct, and were not the result of some human error, it created unlimited possibilities.

The average person, said Professor De Rujula, “could, in principle, travel to the past and kill their mother before they were born”.

Yesterday, the scientists whose findings have force a rethink on the make-up of the universe, officially informed colleagues and asked them for help in uncovering any flaws.

Hundreds of scientists packed an auditorium at CERN in Geneva to hear how a subatomic particle – known as the neutrino – was found to have outrun light and confounded Einstein’s theories.

Last night some scientists urged a high level of caution, saying that the CERN findings would first have to be verified.

Much science-fiction literature is based on the idea that, if the light-speed barrier can be overcome, time travel might theoretically become possible.

Jeff Forshaw, a professor of particle physics at Manchester University, said the results, if confirmed, would mean it would be possible in theory to “send information into the past”.

“In other words, time travel into the past would become possible … [though] that does not mean we’ll be building time machines anytime soon – there is quite a gulf between a time-travelling neutrino to a time-travelling human.”

According to Einstein’s theory, going faster than light is not supposed to happen.

The speed of light – 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometres per second) – has long been considered a cosmic speed limit.

But the CERN team, a collaboration between France’s National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research and Italy’s Gran Sasso National Laboratory, fired a neutrino beam 454 miles (730 kilometres) underground from Geneva to Italy.

Measurements taken over three years found it travelled 60 nanoseconds faster than light – sixty billionth of a second.

Professor Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers working on the project dubbed OPERA, said: “To our great surprise we found an anomaly.

“You could say it’s peanuts, but it’s not. It’s something that we can measure rather accurately with a small uncertainty.

“We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing. We now want colleagues to check them independently.”

He added: “It is a tiny difference, but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent.”

If the experiment is independently repeated – most likely by teams in the United States or Japan – then it would require a fundamental rethink of modern physics. It would also violate the laws of causation. To an outside observer, a faster-than-light object would arrive at its destination before starting its journey.

That assertion, which has withstood over a century of testing, is one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe works. According to the theory, it would take an infinite amount of energy to exceed light speed.

“It is premature to comment on this,” Professor Stephen Hawking, the renowned physicist, said. “Further experiments and clarifications are needed.”

Professor John Brown, astrophysicist, and Astronomer Royal for Scotland, was also wary. “I’m not a gambling person but I’d wager generously that this is not true,” he said. “But even if it was the case and there was something incomplete in Einstein’s theory, it would not revolutionise life in the foreseeable future.

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is an extraordinary claim,” said cosmologist and astrophysicist Professor Martin Rees.