For reasons too complicated to go into, but which are figured into Albert Einstein’s calculations, nothing can go faster than speed of light. With time and space and mass all related, Einstein said if the speed of light could be broken “you could send a telegram to the past”. Yet this most enduring of all scientific principles was remarkably, inexplicably and accidentally violated in a routine experiment conducted by the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.

On this day, September 22, in 2011, as part of the OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment, a stream of neutrinos was beamed from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, 450 miles away in Italy. Their time was measured at 50 nanoseconds earlier than predicted by speed of light calculations.

Alvaro DeRejula, a theorist at CERN, called the result “flabbergasting.” If confirmed, it would overturn the very fundamentals of physics: which was why scientists were very cautious about making any grandiose statements. Measurements and instruments were checked and rechecked, and the experiments were tried again. In March 2012 the neutrinos were clocked at exactly the speed of light, suggesting Einstein’s theory may still have life yet.