In September 2011, when news came out that neutrinos beams sent from the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron to the National Laboratories of Gran Sasso traveled faster than light, immediately discussions about that started. Even the scientists of the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus) experiment were very cautious, well aware that a result so remarkable required to be verified in a very precise and repeatable manner.

Over the months, some doubts were raised but about two months later the experiment was repeated with some variations to further reduce the risk of measurements errors and the results were the same.

Yesterday a rumor came out about the possible problems for the instruments used in the Opera experiment and in a few hours they spread around the world just like the result of last September. This morning, CERN issued a press release confirming that an investigation is underway to check if some instruments malfunctioned.

Specifically, one of the possible problems concerns a possible incorrect calibration of the atomic clock used to determine the timing reference for synchronization with the GPS system. If there was this problem, it could have led to overestimate the neutrinos’ travel time.

The second possible problem concerns a fiber optic connector that carries the signal from the external GPS to the Opera experiment master clock, which might have malfunctioned when the measurements were made. In this case, if there was this problem, it could have led to underestimate the neutrinos’ travel time.

[ad name=”Google Adsense 300″]

The extent of the possible effects caused by those problems is under study. In fact, new measurements with short particles pulses have been scheduled for May only, when scientists will be certain that the instruments will work properly.

It might seem absurd that problems that are after all trivial may have led to the illusion of an extraordinary result. However, we’re talking about incredibly sophisticated equipment so it takes very little for one component to work less than perfectly.

Scientific method is also based on the repeatability of the experiments for this reason. All scientists know very well that as careful as they are in preparing an experiment there may be an error of some kind anyway. Now we’ll wait for the next experiment with neutrinos to see if this is one of those cases.