Was Einstein Wrong?

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein, a German born theoritical physicist, well known for his theory of relativity, stated in the same that any particle that has rest mass could not be accelerated to the speed of light, i.e., 300,000,000 m/sec. However, some scientists at CERN are of the opinion that this so called light barrier has been crossed by some subatomic particles.


Einstein, in his special theory of relativity of 1905 that it is impossible for any particle with rest mass to accelerate beyond the speed of light and hence, it cannot travel into its past as it would be unable for it to cross the light barrier, consequently preventing anomalies such as the famous grandfather paradox. This is also confirmed by the famous equation of mass-energy equivalence which stares that the total energy of a system is always equal to the product of the mass of the system and the square of the speed of light. So, when a body's velocity increases its kinetic energy increases and hence, its mass should also increase, consequently more energy is required to maintain the same velocity and further more energy is required to accelerate it to a greater velocity.So, at speeds nearer to light, the mass of the body would have increased tremendously and hence, tremendous energy is required to accelerate it to the speed of light, preventing it from reaching that speed.

The Neutrino Beam

But, scientists at CERN proclaim that they have found some subatomic particles-neutrinos , which could travel at speeds beyond the speed of light. The CERN team, along with France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research and Gran Sasso National Laboratory fired a beam of neutrino 730 km underground, from Geneva to Italy, and amazed at finding it to travel 60 nanoseconds faster than light.Indeed a nano second is extremely small fraction of a second - a billionth of a second. Hence, there might be a chance of mistake in the calculations of the experimenters and this is a strong argument held by scientists those who believe that light barrier can't be crossed, while the experimenters continue to believe that neutrinos can cross the light barrier. In fact, light is actually obstructed a little in the atmosphere while the neutrinos don't have any such change in the atmosphere.So, this might be a possible reason for this observation.

However, such observations, if proved true, can open gates for sending information to past and may also lead to time travel into past to know the theories which operate in paradoxes like grandfather paradox.

[via The Hindu]

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