Einstein Proved Right in Retest of Neutrinos’ Speed

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28. Easy

The speed of light is roughly 300,000 km/sec. So, imagine two detectors for some type of particle separated by 30 km. You record the time when a short pulse of those particles is detected by the first detector, then the time when that pulse is detected by the second detector.

If the difference in times is greater than 1/10000 of a second, the particles were going slower than light.

If the difference in times is equal to 1/10000 of a second, the particles were going at (or damn near) the speed than light.

If the difference in times is less than 1/10000 of a second... either the particles were going faster than light, or, more likely, you screwed up somewhere.

None of this simple procedure requires any physical object or signal going at or faster than the speed of light as part of the measurement apparatus even though it would be capable of detecting faster-than-light phenomena.

In a real-life experiment the devil is in the details if what you're trying to do is catch a very small difference is speed, like something going just slightly over the speed of light. A seemingly small difference is much more likely to be a calibration problem or procedural error that it is to be the discovery of ground-breaking new physics.