The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists
has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking
the cosmic speed limit - the speed of light - that was set by Albert
Einstein in 1905. If true, it is a result that would change the world.
But that ''if'' is enormous.

Even before the physicists had presented their results at a seminar at
CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, near Geneva, yesterday, a
chorus of physicists had risen up on blogs and elsewhere arguing that
it was way too soon to give up on Einstein and that there was probably
some experimental error. Incredible claims require incredible evidence.

''These guys have done their level best, but before throwing Einstein on
the bonfire, you would like to see an independent experiment,'' said
John Ellis, a CERN theorist who has published work on the speeds of the
ghostly particles known as neutrinos.

According to scientists familiar with the paper, the neutrinos raced
from a particle accelerator at CERN, where they were created, to a
cavern underneath Gran Sasso in Italy, a distance of about 720
kilometres, about 60 nanoseconds faster than it would take a light beam.
That amounts to a speed greater than light by about 0.0025 per cent.

Even this small deviation would open up the possibility of time travel and play havoc with notions of cause and effect.

Einstein - whose theory of relativity established the speed of light as
the ultimate limit - said that if you could send a message faster than
light, ''You could send a telegram to the past''.


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