As stated in the scientific journal Science, scientists have come to the conclusion that the speed of neutrinos does not exceed the speed of light. Research in this area was carried out by French scientists representing the organization CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). CERN is the world’s largest high-energy physics research laboratory.

It is known that neutrino is a fundamental particle that has half-integer spin and participates exclusively in gravitational and weak interactions. Neutrinos are also classified as leptons. Low-energy neutrinos interact rather weakly with substances. For example, neutrinos with energies from 3 to 10 MeV in water have a mean free path of about 1018 m, which is about 100 light years. It was found that every second through the Earth’s area of ​​1 sq. cm is about 6060 neutrinos, which are emitted by the Sun. Despite this, the neutrino does not have a special effect even on humans. At the same time, high-energy neutrinos are detected by interacting with targets.

Not so long ago, in the course of experiments, scientists made a mistake, as a result of which it was believed that the neutrino has a speed greater than the speed of light. But research in recent years has proven the inconsistency of this hypothesis. However, research does not stop, and scientists plan to conduct many more experiments that are designed to prove the theory about the speed of neutrinos or disprove it.

As a result of the experiment, which was carried out in September 2011, physicists put forward the assumption that the speed of neutrinos can still exceed the speed of light by 0.00248%. Such data were obtained on the basis of experiments, as a result of which a neutrino particle from the SPS accelerator in Switzerland, having traveled 730 km, arrived at the detector in the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy earlier than the estimated time by 61 ± 10 nanoseconds. Moreover, this result was recorded for 16 thousand events with neutrinos over 3 years. However, a little later, scientists admitted that some factors that could affect the speed of neutrinos were not taken into account. In addition, scientists from the CERN laboratory have not confirmed the data that the speed of neutrinos is greater than the speed of light.