Particles faster than the speed of light???

This surprising and confusing possibility was brought up due to recent results from OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus), a neutrino experiment at Gran Sasso Laboratory (the paper can be found here).  The experiment works by firing neutrinos from CERN at Gran Sasso through the ground.  The original intent of the experiment was to study neutrino oscillations, but they ended up with a curious result.

When the timed how long it took the neutrinos to reach the detector at Gran Sasso from CERN they clocked in at 987.8 ns (Gran Sasso is 730.085 km away from CERN).  When they checked how long light would have taken in a vacuum they got 1048.5 ns, a difference of 60.7+/-6.9(statistical)+/-7.4(systematic) ns.  In other words the neutrinos appear to be traveling 0.00248+/-0.00028(statistical)+/-0.00030(systematic) percent faster than the speed of light.  The statistical and systematics after the numbers are the calculated errors on the measurements.

This is a mind boggling result, contrary to all that we expect from physics as we know it.  Thus the physicists who work on OPERA have asked other neutrino experiments such as T2K and MINOS to confirm this result.  Naturally they are also searching for any errors in their calculations.  If it is not confirmed then the measurement by OPERA is suspect and there is likely an error in their analysis.  However if confirmed, things will get a little weird to say the least.

Like the OPERA physicists I will refrain from speculating about what this might entail for physics if true.  This result is too significant to speculate on.  We need to know for certain if this is true.  Odds are definitely on the side of it being flat out wrong. Too much of modern physics works too well, which casts significant doubt on this measurement.  Not to mention that a significant delay was not seen between the neutrinos arriving and us observing the explosion of Supernova 1987A.  This single event already ruled out this result, but only for electron neutrinos, the neutrinos in this case are muon and tau neutrinos.  Also there is history to consider, in 2007 a similar claim was made in Chicago but it had a huge margin of error that ruled out the measurement being significant.  This measurement though is way above the normal 3 sigma level of significance (basically 3 times the error bar size) usually needed for scientific data so it deserves close scrutiny.  Naturally the entire scientific community will be holding its collective breath until it is either confirmed or falsified.