Not so fast!
An experiment that appeared to show matter could travel faster than the speed of light - flying in the face of Einstein's theory of relativity - may have been flawed, the journal Science reported.
In the original experiments, subatomic particles called neutrinos blasted from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, traveled 450 miles to Italy 60 nanoseconds faster than a beam of light.
But researchers revealed that a fiber-optic cable connecting a GPS receiver and a "master clock" computer may have been loose, Science reports.
"There is a screw and you have to turn it, but we're not sure if it was well-calibrated," said Arnaud Marsollier, a spokesman for CERN.
"It would be embarrassing if a nasty cable is the reason."
"If this is the case, it could have led to an underestimate of the time of flight of the neutrinos," CERN said in a one-paragraph update on its website.
The other potential flaw is in the main piece of equipment used in the experiment. CERN admitted that the house-sized Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Appartus, or OPERA, might not have been properly calibrated, which could have underestimated the neutrino's speed.
The original findings released in September, asserting that the mystifying neutrino could travel faster than light, divided the scientific community over whether the discovery was an epic breakthrough or a ludicrous sham.
"You have to wonder why they didn't sit tight and check the connections to every cable before making such an incredible announcement," said Jim Al-Khalili, a professor of physics at the University of Surrey in England, who vowed to eat his boxer shorts on TV if the CERN neutrino result was verified.
New experiments attempting to repeat the original results are scheduled for May.
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