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A Scientific Prediction

Six months form here, there won't be a single whatsapp user in the world. Why? Because Telegram...

Wikipedia's Unbearable Lightness

Wikipedia's definition of energy can only be qualified as useless. Here is mine:A bird that...

Should We Trust Scientists?

I am a Science 2.0 newbie: I have written my first article  only a few days ago, and a second...

Blog and peer reviewing - a little confusion

I would like to signal an interesting article I have found on the web:Brian Cox is wrong: blogging...

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Paolo CiafaloniRSS Feed of this column.

Born in Pisa the 14th of April 1965, I live in Lecce, in the south of Italy. My research interests include Particle Physics, Cosmology, Quantum Information Theory. I practice kitesurf, windsurf,... Read More »

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Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity II - A Million Dollar Bet

Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity II - A Million Dollar Bet

Nov 06 2011 | comment(s)

My recent article  on the relationship between Einstein's Theory of Relativity and superluminal neutrinos has triggered a series of comments. Some of them were reasonable, some others not. Among the reasonable doubts on this topic, there is a possible concern about the meaning of "limiting velocity", i.e. velocity that cannot be exceeded in the context of the theory. Could it be that we have found a new limiting velocity-  the one of neutrinos- and the theory still stands up with a new value for a fundamental constant c? Could it be that the speed of light is not well measured?
Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity

Faster Than Light Neutrinos And Relativity

Oct 31 2011 | comment(s)

There is a certain amount of confusion on the relationship between Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the recent experimental results that seem to point towards neutrinos that are faster than light by an amount of about 7 km/s. So let me try to clarify things by answering to the following question:

If neutrinos travel faster than light by 7 km/s, do we need to modify Relativity?

The answer is a clear-cut "Yes"; let me explain why.

Lorentz invariance, which is embodied in the theory of Relativity, has the unescapable consequence that there exists a precise relationship between a free particle's energy E, its momentum p and its mass m: