I've been asked for my thoughts on news from the Gran Sasso Laboratory that subatomic particles have broken the speed of light. From Nature: Researchers at the Opera Collaboration "claim to have measured the 730-kilometre trip between CERN and its detector to within 20 centimetres. They can measure the time of the trip to within 10 nanoseconds, and they have seen the effect in more than 16,000 events measured over the past two years. Given all this, they believe the result has a significance of six-sigma -- the physicists' way of saying it is certainly correct." (Paper here.)
FQXi's John Donoghue, who has been questioning the constancy of light speed, in the search for a theory of quantum gravity, may like the sound of that.
For those worried about possible violations of causality, I can recommend a new bag that I bought from a market stall a few days ago. What I thought was a typo on its label turns out to be quite profound and prescient: "We are specialized in producing high class _causal_ bags."
In case you're wondering how a bag can violate causality, FQXi blogger Daniel Ferrante notes: "It means the airline loses them even before you buy your ticket!"
I think their sales may go up.
More (serious) thoughts to come later (/earlier). Maybe. (And here they are (added 26 September).)
