A deep-sea neutrino telescope off France puts Einstein's relativity to the test

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Physicists have used a telescope at the bottom of the Mediterranean to test one of Einstein's key ideas. Live Science reports on ORCA, part of the KM3NeT neutrino telescope, which sits 2.4km deep off Toulon in France

The team looked for violations of Lorentz invariance, a principle at the heart of relativity which says the laws of physics are the same for all observers moving at constant speed. The study was published on 4 November in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

Using only six detection units, the team collected 5,828 neutrinos over about 17 months and found no violation. The limits they set rival those from much larger experiments, Super-Kamiokande and IceCube

There are now 44 detection units in the water, with 108 planned by 2030. Co-author Lukas Hennig of Erlangen-Nürnberg said he was surprised they had competitive results with only six, and the team will now repeat the test with its sister detector ARCA off Sicily

Einstein continues to pass every test thrown at him, which is remarkable more than a century later. Getting competitive results from a small part of the finished detector shows how powerful KM3NeT will become. Neutrinos are hard to catch, so every one counts

Do you think we will ever find a crack in Einstein's relativity? And what other questions could a giant neutrino telescope answer?

Physicists sank a telescope 1.5 miles under the sea to put Einsteinwww.livescience.com

[Bussin99]

Einstein keeps winning. Every test so far has confirmed his theories. Over a hundred years and still unbeaten. Remarkable. Every new test narrows the options