Einstein’s cosmic speed limit theory put to test
31 July 2013 11:44 PM GMT
Einstein was right! Physicist Albert Einstein’s assertion that there’s an ultimate speed limit, the speed of light, has passed another test. The theory has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn’t stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law.
The team’s first attempt to test this fundamental tenet of the special theory of relativity once again showed Einstein was right, but Leefer and Hohensee are improving the experiment to push the theory’s limits even farther and perhaps turn up a discrepancy that could help physicists fix holes in Tuesday’s main theories of the universe. Hohensee, Leefer and Dmitry Budker, a UC Berkeley physics professor, conducted the test using a new technique involving two isotopes of the element dysprosium.
The team’s first attempt to test this fundamental tenet of the special theory of relativity once again showed Einstein was right, but Leefer and Hohensee are improving the experiment to push the theory’s limits even farther and perhaps turn up a discrepancy that could help physicists fix holes in Tuesday’s main theories of the universe. Hohensee, Leefer and Dmitry Budker, a UC Berkeley physics professor, conducted the test using a new technique involving two isotopes of the element dysprosium.
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