The End of Story of Faster Than Light Neutrinos?

Recently some possible explanations of the faster than light neutrinos were announced. And guess what, after all of these mind blowing speculations of neutrinos travelling through other dimensions or Einstein's theories being wrong it's likely that all of this fuss was basically due to a flawed cable.

So there are two likely explanations - one is basically that one of the cables had a flawed connection, which caused a slight discrepancy, while other explanation is that a timing instrument called an oscillator had a problem.
as CERN press officer Arnaud Marsollier said, the flawed cable connection could account for the 60 microsecond difference between the measured neutrino speed and the speed of light. Although further tests will be needed to fully confirm the explanation, it's the most likely explanation we have.

So I don't know what you think about this guys, but I'm quite happy that the experiment was not confirmed and Einstein's theories still hold. I think we already have too much unsolved questions in the world of physics these days so the fall of Einstein's theories would simply be too much.

  

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Significant Progress at LHC!

In the seminar back at 12th of December held at CERN presented the current results of the search of Higgs boson. The great news was that some significant progress was made. Yet Higgs boson is still not found, let's check out what's  the latest progress update from CERN is all about.

The main conclusion of the seminar was that the most likely mass ranges of Higgs was discovered to be 116-130 GeV  and  115-127 GeV. What is even more amazing that huge hints of Higgs were detected in the latter mass region, yet it's still too weak to confirm the discovery of the particle.

Source

Here's a qoute from the press release:

"We have restricted the most likely mass region for the Higgs boson to 116-130 GeV, and over the last few weeks we have started to see an intriguing excess of events in the mass range around 125 GeV," explained ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti."This excess may be due to a fluctuation, but it could also be something more interesting. We cannot conclude anything at this stage. We need more study and more data. Given the outstanding performance of the LHC this year, we will not need to wait long for enough data and can look forward to resolving this puzzle in 2012."
"We cannot exclude the presence of the Standard Model Higgs between 115 and 127 GeV because of a modest excess of events in this mass region that appears, quite consistently, in five independent channels," explained CMS experiment Spokesperson, Guido Tonelli. "The excess is most compatible with a Standard Model Higgs in the vicinity of 124 GeV and below but the statistical significance is not large enough to say anything conclusive. As of today what we see is consistent either with a background fluctuation or with the presence of the boson. Refined analyses and additional data delivered in 2012 by this magnificent machine will definitely give an answer."


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Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

Today is very special day in the world of Physics as the Nobel prize winners in Physics have been announced today (October 4th). The winners of the prestigious prize are Saul Perlmutter (University of California Berkley), Brian P. Schmidt (Australian National University) and Adam G. Riess (Johns Hopkins University). The prize was given for the astonishing discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe through observations of supernovae.

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It's really nice to see these guys getting the greatest prize in the world of science as the discovery of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe really shook the world. In a sense this discovery brought physicists to the mystery of dark matter, which is perhaps the biggest secret of Physics these days.

If you wish to reed more news check out these links and video:

LINKS: 1) Nobel Prize Website;
2) Videos and other stuff related to Nobel prize in Physics.

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Faster than Light Neutrinos and Other Crazy Stuff...

So if you're wondering what the hell is going on in CERN these days here's the answer. Check out these great videos about what the hell those crazy neutrinos have been up to.

And some more insights from Brian Cox:

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So What's Going on at Cern Lately?

So we already know that guys at the LHC haven't found the Higgs boson yet, but what's going on at Cern, home of the Large Hadron Collider?

Well, since Cern is home of the biggest particle smasher in the world it's natural that there's a lot of fuzz going on there right now. Recently scientists working at Cern announced baffling results, which appeared during one of the experiments in the Gran Sasso laboratory.

So what they did was basically sent some neutrinos from Cern to Gran Sasso laboratory, which is 732 km. away. The interesting part is that they detected neutrinos coming to the lab a fraction of a second earlier than they should. The calculations of the speed revealed that neutrinos must have covered the distance in a faster-than-light speed.

Source

For those of you who don't remember high school physics, light speed at vacuum is one of the most important and well tested constants in science. For more than a hundred years scientists tested  the speed of light and found it to be constant.

"We wanted to find a mistake - trivial mistakes, more complicated mistakes, or nasty effects - and we didn't," said Antonio Ereditato, who was working on the experiment.

Only more independent experiments, which would find the same anomaly would give great evidence that light speed limit is different. However, having in mind that similar anomalies were always resorted, I would bet my money that light speed limit will not be broken.

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"Curiosity" - a Brand New Science Show on Discovery

Guess what - there's another great science documentary coming soon. A brand new show tackling the mysteries of the universe is going on air this Sunday ( August 7th) on 8 pm.

Discovery announced that it's going to be a multicast show translated to 44 different languages. In addition, it will be broadcasted on Animal Planet, Science Channel and TLC.

Producer of the show during the press conference said that the show will be focusing on three main areas - ourselves, our world and our place in the universe. The first episode is going to be called "Did God Create the Universe?" So be sure to check this show out because it sounds promising.

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More Open Yale Courses

Hey I have some great news. The guys from the Yale university added more free courses that are open to the public at their website.

For those of you who don't know what open Yale Courses are - well it's a collection of free university lecture series in a variety of subjects starting with psychology ending with philosophy and physics. In addition to these lectures, the exams, tests and other learning materials are also open to the public.

Here's a preview video of all the new added courses:

And here's the link to the Yale open courses website - LINK

Thanks for reading and good luck learning!

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So When are We Going to Mars?

So When are We Going to Mars?

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