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Faster than light neutrinos?!?!

By: Pedro Ferreira
From: CFTC - UL
At: Instituto de Investigação Interdisciplinar, Anfiteatro
[2011-10-11] 11:30

The OPERA experiment recently announced surprising results: the speed of a beam of muon neutrinos was found to be higher than the speed of light, a 6-σ effect not easily discarded. It is not the first time that faster-than-light (FTL) neutrinos haven been considered: they were proposed as an explanation (later ruled out) to observations of the supernova SN1987A, and the MINOS experiment has results similar to OPERA's. In this talk I will explain the observations of OPERA, discuss possible explanations for the results and take a peek at more exotic implications that FTL neutrinos might have on Physics. The level of the talk will be non-technical, accessible to undergraduates.