Sun image taken in 2003, with solar prominence extending out
30 times the size of Earth. Image courtesy SOHO/EIT (ESA & NASA)
I hardly consider myself brave enough to challenge Einstein outright, so I figured that there may have been a little problem with error bars upon hearing about neutrinos traveling at superluminal speeds over in Europe. There certainly has been a lot of pushback including Einstein's theory of relativity itself - the clocks used to time the neutrinos departure & arrival times were moving.
What's a neutrino you may wonder? It's a subatomic particle with no electrical charge, very tiny but non-zero mass, and hardly interacts with matter. In other words, a neutrino is easy to miss as trillions pass through your body every single second. Where do they come from? Our sun produces them as it undergoes nuclear fusion deep inside that hot ball of gas.
Stay tuned as there is sure to be more back and forth between the OPERA group and doubtful physicists worldwide!
