CERN timing equipment

CERN timing equipment. CNGS beam. Two identical systems are installed at Gran Sasso and CERN: a caesium atomic clock and a special GPS for time-transfer applications. They make it possible to measure neutrino's time of flight with extreme precision. Both clocks are synchronized with nanosecond accuracy by performing common view observations of the same satellite. The OPERA Experiment, dedicated to the observation of a neutrino beam sent by CERN to the INFN Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, has completed a three-year complex research study showing that neutrinos covered the 730 km distance separating the two sites sooner than expected. According to calculations, neutrinos are in fact 60 nanoseconds ahead of the 2.4 milliseconds it would take light to cover the same trajectory.