Strength of science is it self-corrects

Regarding faster than light neutrinos in the news Sept. 22: Was Einstein wrong? No, and neither was Newton, whose theories were superseded by Einstein’s.

To Newton, space, energy, matter and time — assumed to be constant — were all independent, whereas Einstein showed that matter and energy were interchangeable, the gravity of matter warps space as shown by the orbit of Mercury, and that gravity affects the rate of time as does velocity.

While Newton’s gravity law and his laws of motion will describe every action you take from diving off a high dive to flying in a jet plane, your GPS would accumulate a six-mile error every day if Einstein’s relativity equations were not programmed into the algorithm.

In a vacuum, neutrinos travel at the speed of light. How do we know? The light from Supernova 1987A took 168,000 years to reach us; detected by astronomers in 1987. The neutrinos created in that massive explosion arrived at the earth the same time the light did within experimental measurement error. If the neutrinos from that supernova traveled at the faster-than-light speed measured by physicists for neutrinos traveling 454 miles through the earth, they would have arrived three to four years before the light did.

If the CERN physicists are correct about neutrinos moving faster than light, no problem. Physicists will simply work hard to develop a new theory that explains the phenomenon. Rather than overthrow Einstein’s theories that have worked so well, it will probably include Einstein’s physics just as Einstein’s synthesis included Newton’s.

Which brings up an important point. Empirical, scientific truth never claims to be the absolute truth. No one ever has the last word. Scientific theories can be proven false but can never be proven true. The strength of science is that it is self-correcting over time.

David Thiessen

Woodstock