E=MC2: It Might Be Wrong

It's enough to make Einstein's hair stand up: Physicists at CERN think they've spotted neutrinos traveling faster than light, reports AP. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity—his E=MC2 equation—nothing should be able to go that fast. At Wired, Adrian Cho doesn't mince words: "If it’s true, it will mark the biggest discovery in physics in the past half-century."

It's so jarring in the world of science—the BBC explains that modern physics depends on the notion that the "the speed of light is the universe's ultimate speed limit"—that the researchers themselves are asking other scientists to try to duplicate the findings before proclaiming them to be true. "The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," says a CERN spokesman. Chicago's Fermilab says it will begin its own experiments immediately. (More Albert Einstein stories.)