CERN has recently announced that its OPERA experiment has generated results that suggest neutrinos travelling between Geneva and the INFN Gran Sasso lab in Italy are moving faster then the speed of light.

Faster-than-light (FTL) travel, or the lack thereof, is a key plot element in much science fiction, with many hard sci-fi fans taking the line that it should not be used because it is not physically possible.  This result points to a potential softening of that stance.  It is yet to be confirmed by others and has only resulted in measured speeds fractionally faster than light (less than 0.01% faster.)

Personally I will await further scrutiny of the results.  At such small deviations from an expected results anything from the composition of the material the neutrinos pass through, the spin of the Earth or even the fractionally reduced gravity inside the Earth may well be the cause of the anomaly.

Read the press release here: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR19.11E.html

James.