Physicists are therefore treating the results of the experiment with caution and looking to test them again through other separate experiments to be certain of what these results are telling us. 'Should neutrinos travel faster than light, it would overthrow our ideas of the structure of space and time. Attention will now focus on synchronisation of the time references between CERN and Gran Sasso and other potential systematic errors. This eliminates the question mark over one of the main systematic errors associated with the speed measurement. The beam consisted of pulses three nanoseconds long separated by up to 524 nanaoseconds, allowing scientists to pin down the extraction time of the protons which generate the neutrinos with much greater precision. 'The experiment used a specially configured beam with very short beam pulses.

Since then OPERA have rechecked many aspects of their analysis following valuable input from the scientific community. The experiment itself did not claim the observation of superluminal neutrinos but invited the physics community to subject their data to the severest scrutiny. 'OPERA measured the speed of neutrinos travelling between CERN in Geneva and Gran Sasso in Italy 730 km away. Professor Themis Bowcock, Head of the University of Liverpool’s Particle Physics team, said: 'One of the possible explanations of the OPERA experiment results that were released in September this year was that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light. New tests designed to reduce some potential systematic errors, have confirmed the accuracy of the earlier measurement, although more tests are need before the initial measurement can be confirmed or refuted. In September this year the OPERA collaboration presented results which seemed to imply that neutrinos beamed from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory some 760 kilometres away in Italy were travelling faster than light. Viewpoint: Can neutrinos travel faster than light?

Neutrinos faster than light