And fanaticism isn’t one of the listed virtues:
In “Two Alberts Can Be Wrong” (Townhall , September 30, 2011), commentator Tony Katz teases outsome of the popular culture implications of faster-than-light neutrinos.
Researchers were sending Neutrinos – sub-atomic particles – on a 730+km ride from Geneva to the Gran Sasso underground laboratory in Italy. They noticed that the neutrinos were arriving ahead of schedule. It was only fractions of a second, but this is the world of physics! Every nano-second counts. This is Einstein’s world – Albert Einstein – who theorized over 100 years ago that nothing could travely faster than light in a vacuum: a speed of 186,282 miles per hour.
The implications are overwhelming, even to those of us who are not physicists, or thosw who had to double check to see if I spelled physicist properly. Einstein won the Nobel Prize for his contributions to the field of physics, though not for his Theory of Relativity. However, that is how we know him. All of us know him. We call smart kids “Einsteins.” There is a kids cartoon called “Little Einsteins.” He has, in American culture, been cannonized. And its possible that he is wrong!
Ain’t science great? Over 100 years of a theory, used as the basis for physicists all around the world, and – by chance! – a subatomic particle on its way to Italy can possibly prove him wrong. Possibly, because the scientific community is going to be studying this data for a long time.
Here, we still hold out hope that the faster-than-light neutrinos are an honest mistake. But the glory of real science is precisely that Einstein could be wrong. Has Darwin ever been wrong? Ever?