To be precise, this latest experiment only ruled out one possible source of error (namely, bias in the detection of arriving neutrinos causing it to preferentially detect neutrinos at the forefront of the pulse). This doesn't affirm that the neutrinos actually exceeded light-speed.

But it is an important step towards understanding what's happening, and it's great that the OPERA group were able to put together this followup experiment so quickly.

I wrote to the lead author asking them to release the source code of the software that they used for the data analysis. I have yet to receive a reply, but it's pretty important to eliminate a programming error from this.

For example, there were small errors in the Met Office's climate change software that I detected. The scientific papers were correct, but the translation into code was not. This could have happened here and it would be better if they released the code.

http://blog.jgc.org/2010/02/something-odd-in-crutem3-station...

The last thing I heard about this was that the results could be explained by the researchers overlooking the relativistic motion of the GPS clocks, and when corrected for it, the results were actually another confirmation of special relativity. See http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27260/

That said, a brief search turned up this paper ( https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~ebunn/vanelburg.pdf ) which argues that that explanation is faulty (i.e., the paper made a mistake, and when corrected, the original researchers' results stand).

(Disclaimer: although I once read a book on this stuff, I shouldn't be confused with an expert, and I have no idea who's right and who's wrong. But it is exciting.)

I seriously cannot wait for the MINOS experiment :)

If quantum entanglement "pissed off" Einstein, I can only imagine his reaction to this.

Putting my tester's cap on, would it be feasible to have OPERA repeat the experiment with photons, instead of neutrinos? Presumably, if that experiment showed that photons travel faster than light (i.e., light travels faster than light), it would prove that there had to be an error in the experiment.

Will this widen the gap between relativity and quantum mechanics? or will it actually help in finally resolving the disconnect between these two greatest and well tested theories? Particles defying general relativity is well known, but defying special relativity? I can see it going both ways.

I have very basic physic knowledge, and little time. I'm quite interested, however, to know how they synchronized their timers since the Neutrino speed is faster than light. Anyone has a short explanation or an article for that?

It's more likely they found a particle that travels back in time than a particle that goes faster than light.

I am hoping against hope...

So we're left with what, GPS errors? I've gone through their experimental setup and the timing looks foolproof. The only options left in my mind are

1) The distance between the labs is smaller than they think

2) Tachyonic neutrinos (not likely)

What is the difference between neutrinos and regular light photons? Do Neutrinos also exhibit the wave particle duality? Does this mean Albert Einstein was wrong, after all these years of assuming his "biggest blunder" was right?

The worst kinds of bugs are the ones that only happen in production, when you have some crazy set up with a load balancer, a CDN and/or Varnish, and a few app servers, high traffic, middle of the day, and a bunch of executives hovering. I have seen a crazy bug that happened only on one of the identical app servers. Turns out SVN export didn't perform correctly (still don't know why), and one of the files was messed up. That was not easy to find.

I have seen Apache ignore updated PHP files, and serving old code, which should never happen. This a real bitch to debug.

I wonder if us realizing speed of light isn't the cosmic limit for everything are like us again at realizing Earth isn't flat.