Einstein was right: The Neutrinos no travel faster than light. The bars are two types of people: those who vibrated months ago because Einstein was wrong, and those who rejoice now that they were wrong that vibrated. If Einstein had reared its head on 23 September and had read the cover of The World, which declared inaugurated the era of travel to the past, most likely would have responded: "If they feel the good Lord, because my theory is correct.” It's what he said in a similar situation, or worse.

Physicist Dario Autiero and scientists experiment Opera National Institute of Nuclear Physics Italian had measured a flight speed of neutrinos than that of light. They made the announcement at the European Laboratory of Particle Physics (CERN), which was marginally involved in the experiment as a supplier of neutrons.

In fact, the entire staff of theoretical physics had wrinkled his nose at the result announced in September: those neutrinos can travel faster than light, an inviolable limit for the theory of relativity of Einstein. They seemed to think, as Einstein would have done that if the experiment contradicted the theory, what was wrong was the experiment, not theory. If science is a slave to the data, this may seem a curious attitude, daring and even unscientific: another example of the conservative nature of the scientific elite. But Einstein and scientific elite were right. The CERN experiment and theory is dead, Einstein is still alive. Sorry for the good God.

Even the scientific director of CERN, Sergio Bertolucci, admitted Friday in Kyoto: "Although this result is not as exciting as some would have liked, is what we all expected at the bottom." Good start, but on a tangent. Bertolucci even managed to somehow transmute the edifying lesson in a belly flop. "The story caught the public imagination," he said, "and has given people the opportunity to see in action the scientific method, an unexpected result has been subjected to scrutiny, has been thoroughly investigated and resolved thanks in part to collaboration between normally competitive with each other experiments. This is how science advances. " It's an excuse, but it is also true.

But then, what is the arrogance of physicists? Could it be that they know that relativity is true, to the point of not giving credit to the experiments that contradict it? Is not really a foreign concept to science, a body of knowledge that is declared in constant revision? Is not that the end of the lesson left us Karl Popper, for whom the essence of a scientific theory worthy of the name is just your provisional and falsifiable, self-destructive their vocation, their permanent humiliation to the dictatorship of the data constantly spitting space telescopes, gene sequencers and particle accelerators? You see not: for now the theory to be reviewed is not Einstein, but that of Popper.

If the falsifiability criterion was the scientific value of a theory, rating agencies would win every day the Nobel Prize. The horoscopes are extremely contestable-enough to save the newspaper until the next day to refute all of Taurus to Sagittarius, but that does not make a scientific theory. Newtonian gravitation is not a good theory to be refuted, but because they are simple, self-consistent, successful and bright.

A high speed begins to fail and must be replaced by Einstein's relativity, but that has little to do with Popperian refutation: Newton's equations live inside of Einstein. There are lies, but the aspect that offers the true view from the balcony on the first floor. While developing the mathematics of general relativity, Einstein did not bother to consider the formalism inconsistent with classical gravity: Newton knew he had to remain true from the second floor balcony.

Similarly, leaders of theoretical physics today know that relativity is only an ingredient of some larger truth that one day will occupy the third floor. I know because Einstein's equations break up into the microscopic world of subatomic particles, and are incompatible with quantum mechanics governing these scales. Looking for a more general and abstract theory that encompasses both and resolve these contradictions. Relativity hopes to be part of a broader theory. But that is one thing and another thing that neutrinos exceed the speed of light. That would be a refutation of the front that would salivate to Popper. Imply that half of twentieth century physics is wrong.

And it can be. The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a direct consequence of Einstein's relativity, and therefore can be considered a demonstration that the speed of light is a fundamental limit of nature that nothing can pass. The most famous equation in history, E = mc2, not only is the foundation of nuclear energy but also solar, because it is the reason why the stars shine. Lasers and photoelectric cells are derived from Einstein's theories, such as fiber optics, the guts of computers and space flight.

General relativity, the large current theory of gravity, time and space, and the foundation of modern cosmology, predicts physical reality with an indecent amount of decimal places. And the heart of this theory is that the speed of light is a fundamental limit: the kind of border that does not jump or neutrinos. Come deeper theories that make us wiser, and that general relativity is just a special case, as the gravitation of Newton is that. But it cannot be a lie. Not in the sense of Popper.

Einstein formulated relativity to answer the question: what would happen if someone managed to run so fast to reach a light wave? The person would see a wave of light that is still, as it seems still a train moving in parallel to ours. But the speed of light is a fundamental law of nature, and therefore still cannot seem to anyone.

Einstein's solution was to accept the facts and derive its logical consequences, for them appear strange. Speed ​​is not only the game space by time. If the speed of light has to be constant even run as much as it is that time and space can not be. This theory of special relativity is called 1905, and one of its direct consequences is the famous equation E = mc2, which revealed that the mass (m) and energy (E) are two sides of the same coin, and a tiny amount mass can be a lot of energy when multiplied by the square of the speed of light (c), which is a huge number.