Are Neutrinos Faster than Light? 


Kevin J Soto Villanueva 

Several days ago, there was a commotion in the Physics world. Scientists of the CERN discovered that a previously known particle called neutrino travels faster than light. But, is this phenomenon possible? According to the special relativity theory that we learned in Physics, which in part states that light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity c (one of the fundamental constant of nature), which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body, it cannot be.

Neutrinos are particles that emerge in nuclear reactions, radioactive decay, nuclear bomb explosions and death of stars exploding in supernova. They are uncharged particle, fermionic type with half a spin. These particles have mass, but very small, and it is very difficult to measure it, which implies that they are not affected by electromagnetic forces, and gravity has little influence on them.

We know that to accelerate a body, you have to apply an energy, bodies with greater mass, the greater the energy that should be applied. As we approach the speed of light (c), the mass of the moving body increases more rapidly, so that to continue accelerating, and as we get closer to "c", the mass of the object gets closer to infinite magnitudes. This would be absurd because it is not possible to apply such energy, as well that is impossible the existence of a body of infinite mass. This is the reason nothing can travel faster than light. In advance, we can deduce that to accelerate a neutrino at speeds approaching that of light is much easier than to accelerate a proton, since it has less than a billionth of the mass of it. However, despite this apparent ease to accelerate it, the theory of relativity demonstrates that even the very small mass of neutrino, in order to accelerate it, will increase the more it approaches "c". Then by the theory, there is no place for the neutrino; if it wants to travel at the speed of light it'll require infinite energy.

What this phenomenon could change is variable. From the size and age of the Universe to the distance of the stars and galaxies. All of them would be miscalculated and would need to be done again. Also one such possibility is to look again at the 'mass' of photons, because they may have it and are beyond the limits of detection, thus traveling at the speed of light does not alter the principles of relativity. Either Einsteinium physics are right and nothing travels faster than the speed light or it is wrong, maybe incomplete and scientists will need to rebuild the theory of relativity from the start up. Neutrinos have been a difficult particle to study, unreactive, illusive and even ghostly. They can pass through the heart of a star and not interact with a single particle of matter. It's more likely that this discovery may finally answer why neutrinos are so hard to detect or interact with. Maybe they are able to burrow in and out to different dimensions. It would allow them to travel faster than light not by exceeding light speed itself, but by taking what we can call “shortcuts”. How they do that though will be an interesting process of discovery.