Do you remember the finding late last year of a faster-than-light particle? Scientists were at a loss to explain this Einstein-defying phenomenon, and the whole of existence may well have been in jeopardy1. Well fret not, for it was apparently just a bad cable.
According to sources familiar with the experiment, the 60 nanoseconds discrepancy appears to come from a bad connection between a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of the neutrinos’ flight and an electronic card in a computer.
That’s long been my first rule of tech support: Always, always check the cables!
Footnotes:
Not really. ↩︎
