In late September we reported the "faster than the speed of light" claim from CERN researchers working on the OPERA project. That research group reported to have recorded neutrinos fired from the CERN center in Switzerland, arriving 60 nanoseconds sooner than light particles covering that same distance. Last week, this same team repeated a modified version of their experiment which seemed to confirm their findings that they had indeed discovered something faster than the speed of light - breaking Einstein's theory of special relativity.

Yesterday however, an independent team of scientists (experiment team ICARUS) from the Gran Sasso facility in Spain (the same location as the receptor) reported that they had analyzed the September data and results, and argue that the measurements of the neutrinos energy contradict that finding.

Instead of measuring time - the ICARUS team looked at how much energy the neutrinos had when they arrived. They argue that on the basis of recently published studies by two top U.S. physicists, the neutrinos pumped down from CERN, near Geneva, should have lost most of their energy if they had travelled at even a tiny fraction faster than light.

But, the ICARUS scientists said, the neutrino beam as tested in their equipment registered an energy spectrum fully corresponding with what it should be for particles travelling at the speed of light - and no more.

Physicist Tomasso Dorigo, who works at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the U.S. Fermilab near Chicago, said in a post on the website Scientific Blogging that the ICARUS paper was “very simple and definitive.”

Prof Jim Al-Khalili, the University of Surrey, who threatened to eat his boxer shorts if the original OPERA result was proved right, said: "Usually we see this effect when particles go faster than light through transparent media like water, when light is considerably slowed down.

"So these neutrinos should have been spraying out particles like electrons and photons in a similar way if they were going superluminal – and in the process would be losing energy."

But they seemed to have kept the energy they started from, which rules out faster-than-light travel."

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