Get ready to rewrite the laws of physics!

10 Replies Christopher Roberts

At the end of last week the news broke that scientists at Cern believed they had managed to send subatomic particles faster than the speed of light! This was big science news, and potentially big technology news in the future, however I choose not to write about the discovery straight away, as I wanted to find out as much as I could before reporting back to you.

What happened?

So what basically happened last week was that scientists in Cern (Switzerland) who have been blasting neutrinos (subatomic particles) 732km all the way to Gran Sasso (Italy) for a good few years now, collated all their data, and found that it would actually appear that the neutrinos arrived at Gran Sasso when light was still 18m away Basically the neutrinos raced light 732km and won by 0.00000006 seconds –  or as you could also say, 60 nanoseconds.

Is this true?

Scientists at Cern would tell you that their research has been checked and double checked, therefore what they have found out is true as they can’t seem to find a flaw in the research. However at the same time, almost any good physicist, and no doubt scientist working on the project would tell you that it can’t be true and that a variable must have been overlooked, as the results are impossible!


To verify the findings, two similar projects one in Hida (Japan) and the other in Chicago (USA) are attempting to recreate the experiment, and should have reliable enough results, hopefully, by some time next year.

Why is this important that the neutrinos travelled faster than the speed of light?

Einstein said that it was impossible to travel faster than the speed of light. If you like, light was the universal speed limit, no faster could anything ever go than light, you could go as fast, but not faster. This would mean that to get to the sun, (not that you would want to) the quickest you could ever do it would be in 8 minutes and 12 seconds.

The Sun

It takes around 8 minutes and 12 seconds for the light from the sun to reach earth

If the results from this experiment are correct, with some extra thrust, it would be possible for the neutrinos to get there even faster than light could.

How have they ‘broken the speed limit’?

You may be wondering how the neutrinos managed to get to Gran Sasso faster than light, and as are many scientists! There are two main theories of how they did it at the moment.

The first theory is that the speed of the neutrinos was so great they were simply able to travel faster than light.

The second, much more interesting theory is that the neutrinos didn’t exceed the speed of light, but instead dimension jumped! This means that they probably didn’t travel faster than the speed of light, just used another dimension to get from Cern to Gran Sasso.

The Doctor's TARDIS

The Doctor’s TARDIS (from Doctor Who) travels in time and space, this is only possible if you can either go faster then the speed of light, or jump dimensions

Physicist Brian Cox has an excellent explanation of how this could potentially work. When talking about extra dimensions he has said that:

“…if they are right, then things can take short cuts through the extra dimensions. It’s just like saying there is a speed limit that stops you going, lets say you go from London to Sidney, so you fly around the earth from London to Sidney, but the other way to do it, is go through digging a big tunnel, straight through the earth and that’s a shortcut. So in some ways, extra dimensions can behave like that, so what could be happening is the neutrinos could be taking a shortcut thorough another dimension.”

If this were right, then Einstein’s theory of special relativity wouldn’t be violated, just only valid in three dimensions.

What next?

The data is now out there on the net, for all scientists to analyse. Also, there are many places that are going to try and replicate the stud, to prove or disprove the results.

Hopefully we will have some more news soon, as to whether we actually can get things to travel faster than the speed of light, and as to whether there are are more than three (four including time) dimensions!

Anyone else slightly excited by this? 😀

Can green technology help us get out of the red?

14 Replies Christopher Roberts

Most people know that the world has recently emerged from an economic recession. Many people also know that we are all dangerously close to slipping back in, and are replying on governments around the world to keep us in the black.

However, has anyone thought about green technology as a way of helping steer an economy back to growth and prosper?

Well it would appear that Scotland might be doing just that, as they are trying to encourage as many as 600 companies to move into the ‘green economy’ in order to boost profitability. The green economy consists mainly of renewable energy sources, and low-carbon technologies.

Scottish flag - offshore wind farm

Scotland seem to have recognised that there could soon be big money in this industry, hence the drive towards getting more firms into the industry.


In its attempts to become the industry leader in green technology, Scotland’s Finance Secretary, John Swinney has said that he wants to increase exports 50% by 2017 and encourage inward investment in green and low-carbon technologies.

Unemployment seems to be a problem everywhere at the moment, but Mr Swinney’s new ‘green growth’ plans are likely to create around 130,000 jobs by the year 2020.

What do you think, is Scotland taking a step in the right direction by investing in green technologies, or is is a risky option to take given the current global economic climate?

Windows 8 is on the way!

27 Replies Christopher Roberts

I have recently upgraded to Windows 7, which is why I kind of wasn’t that pleased when Microsoft announced (early last week) that it was getting set to launch its next operating system, Windows 8, some time next year – probably around April.


At the Build developers’ conference in California, Microsoft unveiled the new operating system, (no doubt still in early beta stages) and gave us a sneak peak at to what is in store in the next version of Windows.

They stated that the core foundation of Windows 8 was Windows 7, but better! To quote Steven Sinofsky exactly, he said:

…everything that was great about windows 7, well we took that and we made it even better in Windowws 8!

Despite saying this, this version of Windows OS looks like it has had a dramatic overall.

Windows is currently under more pressure than ever before in its long, domineering history. In the past the cheap, affordable and compatible OS, always used to be Microsoft’s Windows. Now however Apple are putting increasing pressure on Windows, along with Google’s new attempt to bring down the giant of Windows in the form of Chrome OS.

Hence why Windows 8 seems to be dramatically different to all previous versions of Windows.

So what is going to be different? Well for starters, for the first time ever, a Windows OS will be compatible with low power ARM-designed processors.

Also, from the glimpses and comments that Microsoft have currently given us/made, it looks like Microsoft are attempting to make Windows a more ‘family friendly’ operating system, in that it’s more of a media based OS. This is probably done to try and steer away from the classical view of Windows in that it is an operating system designed primarily for spreadsheets, documents and other work/business related tasks.

Windows 8 Start Screen

A glimpse at the probably new start screen design for Windows 8

In addition to this, Windows 8 will support touchscreen devices, possible Microsoft’s way of saying “get ready for Windows Tablet guys!” who knows.

Microsoft knows that it has to pull something pretty special out of the bag this time, or it could seriously loose its foot in the computing market, not only due to the increased competition, but also because users are slowly moving away from desktops and laptops, and towards smart phones and tablets.

That’s pretty much all the information I have at the moment, however no doubt we will have loads of updates on Technology Bloggers for you, as soon as we find out more about this new OS 🙂

What do you think and hope for with Windows 8? Do you speculate that it will be another Vista – i.e. slow and laggy, incompatible, riddle with bugs, and hated by many tech gurus, or will it be like Vista to 7, a breath of fresh air?