One particle’s trek suggests that ‘spacetime foam’ doesn’t slow neutrinos
The nearly massless particles appear to travel at virtually the speed of light
An intergalactic race between light and a bizarre subatomic particle called a neutrino has ended in a draw.
The tie suggests that high-energy neutrinos, which are so lightweight they behave as if they’re massless, adhere to a basic rule of physics: Massless particles travel at the speed of light.
Comparing the arrival times of a neutrino and an associated blaze of high-energy light emitted from a bright, flaring galaxy (SN Online: 7/12/18) showed that the neutrino and light differed in speed by less than a billionth of a percent, physicists report in a paper posted July 13 at arXiv.org.