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Roll Over Einstein: Law of Physics Challenged
11:27 Sep 24 2011
Times Read: 495




This is an absolutely HUGE discovery for the world of quantum physics. I'm looking forward to see where these findings go - if they're genuine, that is.





One of the very pillars of physics and Einstein's theory of relativity — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — was rocked Thursday by new findings from one of the world's foremost laboratories.



European researchers said they clocked an oddball type of subatomic particle called a neutrino going faster than the 186,282 miles per second that has long been considered the cosmic speed limit.



The claim was met with skepticism, with one outside physicist calling it the equivalent of saying you have a flying carpet. In fact, the researchers themselves are not ready to proclaim a discovery and are asking other physicists to independently try to verify their findings.



"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, which provided the particle accelerator that sent neutrinos on their breakneck 454-mile trip underground from Geneva to Italy.



Going faster than light is something that is just not supposed to happen according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity — the one made famous by the equation E equals mc2. But no one is rushing out to rewrite the science books just yet.



It is "a revolutionary discovery if confirmed," said Indiana University theoretical physicist Alan Kostelecky, who has worked on this concept for a quarter of a century.



Stephen Parke, who is head theoretician at the Fermilab near Chicago and was not part of the research, said: "It's a shock. It's going to cause us problems, no doubt about that — if it's true."



Even if these results are confirmed, they won't change at all the way we live or the way the world works. After all, these particles have presumably been speed demons for billions of years. But the finding will fundamentally alter our understanding of how the universe operates, physicists said.



Einstein's special relativity theory, which says that energy equals mass times the speed of light squared, underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly up until now."



France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory on the experiment at CERN.



CERN reported that a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds. (A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second.)



Given the enormous implications of the find, the researchers spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment.



A team at Fermilab had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but a large margin of error undercut its scientific significance.



If anything is going to throw a cosmic twist into Einstein's theories, it's not surprising that it's the strange particles known as neutrinos. These are odd slivers of an atom that have confounded physicists for about 80 years.



The neutrino has almost no mass, comes in three different "flavors," may have its own antiparticle and has been seen shifting from one flavor to another while shooting out from our sun, said physicist Phillip Schewe, communications director at the Joint Quantum Institute in Maryland.



Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, author of the book "Fabric of the Cosmos," said neutrinos theoretically can travel at different speeds depending on how much energy they have. And some mysterious particles whose existence is still only theorized could be similarly speedy, he said.



Fermilab team spokeswoman Jenny Thomas, a physics professor at the University College of London, said there must be a "more mundane explanation" for the European findings. She said Fermilab's experience showed how hard it is to measure accurately the distance, time and angles required for such a claim.



Nevertheless, Fermilab, which shoots neutrinos from Chicago to Minnesota, has already begun working to try to verify or knock down the new findings.



And that's exactly what the team in Geneva wants.



Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that "they are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've done and really scrutinize it in great detail, and ideally for someone elsewhere in the world to repeat the measurements."



Only two labs elsewhere in the world can try to replicate the work: Fermilab and a Japanese installation that has been slowed by the tsunami and earthquake. And Fermilab's measuring systems aren't nearly as precise as the Europeans' and won't be upgraded for a while, said Fermilab scientist Rob Plunkett.



Drew Baden, chairman of the physics department at the University of Maryland, said it is far more likely that the CERN findings are the result of measurement errors or some kind of fluke. Tracking neutrinos is very difficult, he said.



"This is ridiculous what they're putting out," Baden said. "Until this is verified by another group, it's flying carpets. It's cool, but ..."



So if the neutrinos are pulling this fast one on Einstein, how can it happen?



Parke said there could be a cosmic shortcut through another dimension — physics theory is full of unseen dimensions — that allows the neutrinos to beat the speed of light.



Indiana's Kostelecky theorizes that there are situations when the background is different in the universe, not perfectly symmetrical as Einstein says. Those changes in background may alter both the speed of light and the speed of neutrinos.



"But that doesn't mean Einstein's theory is ready for the trash heap," he said.



"I don't think you're going to ever kill Einstein's theory. You can't. It works," Kostelecky said. "There are just times when an additional explanation is needed," he said.



If the European findings are correct, "this would change the idea of how the universe is put together," Columbia's Greene said. But he added: "I would bet just about everything I hold dear that this won't hold up to scrutiny."

Shocking New Evidence in Amanda Knox Murder Case
21:20 Sep 16 2011
Times Read: 511

Newly revealed evidence, never before seen by Italian courts, supports American student Amanda Knox’s chances of being exonerated and released from jail when the appeal of her December 2009 murder conviction concludes later this month.



The Italian newsweekly “Oggi” has released a report detailing how police didn’t perform DNA analysis on a blood-stained sweatshirt found at the scene of British student Meredith Kercher’s 2007 murder until some 46 days after the British exchange student’s death.



Walter Patumi, a forensic expert hired by Knox’s defense team, told Oggi that while an Italian squad of “scientific police” were supposed to be investigating the crime scene, this key piece of evidence sat at the bottom of a basket of dirty laundry and was only identified after much of the crime scene evidence had already been moved.



“I can’t tell you how embarrassed the police were when I showed them [the sweatshirt],” Patumi told Italian GQ this week. Fueled by Patumi’s explosive revelation, some in the Italian media are now suggesting police may have planted the garment there.



This key piece of evidence has never been mentioned during court proceedings, and its emergence will likely further sway Italian public opinion in Knox’s favor. In recent weeks, the case against her has all but evaporated as judges in the case refused prosecutors’ motion to hear additional testimony from forensic experts. Previously, court-appointed independent experts contradicted prosecution claims about DNA evidence, and criticized procedures used by the local authorities during the initial investigation.



Ironically, a sweater worn by Knox after the murder — one which police claimed she had burned because her blood was on it — was found intact on Amanda’s bed in April 2008, six months after Kercher’s murder.



Madison Paxton, 24, Amanda’s best friend from her days at the University of Washington, is in Perugia for the appeal. She told The Daily Caller: “It’s disgusting to me that a magazine has done more to uncover the truth and reexamine the evidence than those responsible for keeping innocent people in prison.”



Also bolstering Knox’s case is a police wiretap recording which Oggi first published on September 7. In the recording, Rudy Guede, an African immigrant who was also convicted in Kercher’s murder, tells a friend during a Skype phone call that a man whom he didn’t recognize killed Kercher after entering the apartment she shared with Knox.



In the phone call, Guede claimed that he was in the bathroom after engaging in sexual activity with Kercher when she was attacked, and that he was injured in an altercation with her assailant. Guede made no mention in the call of having seen Knox at the murder scene.



Closing arguments for Knox’s appeals trial begin on September 23.







Everything about this case was just so wrong, right from the beginning. Botched evidence, corrupt prosecutor, interrogations done in Italian with no lawyer present, convenient loss of important video footage, questionable distribution of power etc. etc. I've been following this case for a while now, and I'll be so happy for Amanda if she gets released.

EU Backs Scotland in Row Over Fees for English Students
23:52 Sep 06 2011
Times Read: 524


I know this is blatantly racist, and I know I shouldn't find it so funny, but I really do. I guess living in Ireland has rubbed off on me...



The EU backed Scotland Tuesday in a bitter row over its free university education system, which also extends to other European students -- whereas those from England must pay thousands every year.



"There is no violation of EU law," Dennis Abbott, spokesman for European Union education commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, told AFP, after England-based students announced plans to mount a legal challenge.



"The Scottish practice in relation to students from other parts of the UK is a matter of policy internal to the UK and outside the scope of EU law," Abbott underlined.



A cross-border dispute intensified on Monday when the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland's capital, announced it will from September 2012 charge students from "rUK" fees totalling 36,000 pounds (41,000 euros, $58,000).



That is now a commonly-used acronym for the rest of the UK: England, Wales and Northern Ireland.



The Edinburgh fees would beat even those at Cambridge or Oxford -- although in Scotland most degrees take four years, as against three south of the border.



The divergence has come about because Scotland and England, while partners in the British state, have always retained separate legal and educational systems throughout their strained, three-centuries-old union.



It was made possible by votes in the respective Scottish and British parliaments -- the former since May this year under majority control by left-leaning nationalists bolstered this week by a respected poll that put a majority of Scots in favour of independence.



The first vote, in Edinburgh in February 2008, restored traditional free education for Scottish-domiciled students; the second, in December 2010 in London, increased university tuition fees to a maximum of 9,000 pounds per annum from next year.



However, the British government has no powers over Scotland in the sphere of education, as with justice and most other domestic policy areas.



English universities feared losing out in the lucrative race for overseas students if they did not raise funding.



That led Scotland's government to allow its universities to charge the same ceiling to rUK students in a bid to avoid "fees refugees" flooding across the border, and protect places for domestic learners.



Edinburgh, like Saint Andrews where Prince William met his wife Kate Middleton as students, has long been a favourite for English emigres.



The university has said it will offset its new fees with 6.7-million-pound annual bursaries for non-Scottish students.



But England-based lawyer Phil Shiner has said he intended mounting a court challenge, claiming a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.



Higher education is government-subsidised in Scotland for residents in Scotland, and, under EU law that "prohibits discrimination between local students and students from other EU countries," must be likewise for undergraduates from other EU states.



However, "according to Scottish law, students from the rest of the UK can instead be charged fees," Abbott said.



And because Scotland is still a part of the UK, he said, the EU considers the case "an internal matter, for national authorities to consider."



About 22,500 "rUK" students go to Scottish universities each year.