So if your days have been anything like mine in recent weeks anytime I talk to anyone with even a vague semblance of what particle physics is and that I am an experimentalist (in training of course) the question comes….
“So what about CERN proving Einstein wrong with those things going faster than light?”
To which I respond politely, “Crazy stuff…but anytime someone says they see something going faster than light I put my hand on my wallet because something is fishy”.
If the person is nice/interested enough to want a further explanation I try to explain what the OPERA measurement is along with loads of caveats that I don’t work on this experiment, as scientists they did hundreds of cross-checks, and that they wouldn’t release this result if they weren’t convinced something is strange here…etc…etc…
If someone is daring enough to push and ask what I think about it my response has been simple: “Science is about repeatability and accuracy so I’ll wait till the next group of experimentalists weighs in”.
Today on the BBC I saw the news announcement that “Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to run again“. Aside from the obvious things wrong with the title of the argument (this wasn’t an experiment to search for faster-than-light neutrinos) the article explains that during this next run they are going to attempt to remove on of the largest possible sources of systematic errors in the OPERA measurment, namely the length of the length of the proton bunch widths being sent towards Gran Sasso from 10 microseconds to ~ 1 nanosecond with ~ 500 nanoseconds between pulses.
While you still can’t measure exactly which neutrino is from which proton the way you would like to in a perfect measurement, this should allow them to be more accurate on average than before and take away a source of error many people I would consider experts have said is of greatest concern.
While I’m sure this is only one of many improvements that will be made to this measurement to address all the…shall we say…”constructive criticism” the OPERA 
experiment has received since their result. The bad news is that if they end up with a null measurement and find that neutrinos don’t in fact go faster than the speed of light the news and fan fare will be much less…because while for scientists a null result is still a result…for the rest of the world a null result is not news.
So I think we have some interesting times in experimental physics coming in the very near future!
I think what is really good about the whole thing is that it does educate the general public that: a) Physics is constantly changing as we learn new things. b) Physics is actually exciting, especially at the frontiers of what we know. c) we should keep funding experimental research like this to ensure that new discoveries (regardless of their ability to be disproven) can be made.
Besides, you ask the average person on the street about the last thing they heard about neutrinos, chances are you can find someone who heard they broke the speed of light, probably didn’t hear that the repeatability is suspect. It’s the imagination of people that’s going to keep science going. We think we know too much.
If this paper http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1110/1110.5275v1.pdf is to be believed (I don’t know enough to understand it well unfortunately), this new experiment should give a null result.
What exactly would be the scientific implications if these particles are confirmed to actually travel faster than light?
Probably that behavior of photons like behavior neutrinos in this experiment. It is necessary will measure time of flight of a laser impulse over the Earth on the same distance:
http://prespacetime.com/index.php/pst/article/view/261/262
Exciting findings indeed!!
But I strongly beleive that the results should be cross-checked by properly syncronizing the clocks at the experimental set-ups and by possibly using an external means of communication system to permit syncronization without any errors!!
The conclusion of the OPERA experiment is not that the velocity of the neutrinos was greater than c, but only that the neutrinos arrived BEFORE the photons.
Neutrinos are mass particles. According to the Special Relativity (SR) theory, if they have a high velocity (#c), for them the distance of the journey is shorter and more and more shorter if their velocity is near c.
With the simple equations of the SR one get for the travelling duration of the neutrinos:
Tn = (Lo/Vn)(1-(Vn^2/c^2))^(1/2)
Tn was 2.43928084 ms – 60.71 ns = 2.43922013 ms, the measured TOF of the neutrinos
Lo = 731’278.00 m
c = 299’792’458 m/s
Lo/c = 2.43928084 ms
The unknown here is Vn, the velocity of the neutrinos.
By simple transformation, one get :
Vn = Lo/sqrt(Tn^2 + (Lo^2/c^2))= 211’987’918 m/s, i.e. 70.7115% of c!
The distance of the journey for the neutrinos is L = 517’085.20 m.
One can also generally demonstrate that if their velocity Vn is greater than c/sqrt(2), or 0.707106…*c, the mass particles still arrive BEFORE photons. It was the case in the OPERA experiment. They arrived ~60.71 ns before the light.
A conclusion :
This OPERA event is a new demonstration of the validity of the SR and also an experimental demonstration that one can transmit material signals more “quickly” (i.e. in a shorter duration and not in a greater velocity) than the transmission of electromagnetic signals, in spite of a velocity lower than c ; this is due to the fact that the distance is shorter for them.
Before 23 years, I had proved mathematically that relative velocity may be more than light velocity. CERN proved experimentally that velocity of Neutrinos may be more than light, if this news will be confirmed then that will be new beginning of physics.
Please read paper “What is matter & dark matter is made up of?” on my web site http://www.maheshkhati.com. This paper may help to find solution to problems like what is dark matter? & about true relativity. I strongly oppose special theory of relativity
While you are worried that a refutation of the experiment will not be highly publicized, and others are happy that it will show how science is done, having such a probably incorrect result by our most premier research institution is a disaster that will be cited by science skeptics. Even Governor Perry of our second largest state in population, Texas, in a very public debate tried to cite something about Galileo being wrong as an argument against global warming. Today, we have science skeptics about evolution, global warming, man-caused global warming, government funded scientists, vaccine safety, etc. While the OPERA experimenters were careful to not yet claim certainty, the effect was to not trust a famous scientist, Einstein, and a probable OPERA refutation will also give another example of not needing to believe scientists. Premier scientists have to be careful to not damage the reputation of science and scientists in their announcements, and the institutions of science have to think about how to accommodate preliminary announcements in a careful way.