Relatively stupid

Almost six months ago the scientific team of the CERN's OPERA experiment announced to the whole world that they had detected some neutrinos traveling from Switzerland to Italy faster than the speed of light. Immediately, theories ranging from the mundane (human error) to the very sophisticated (extra spatial dimensions) were suggested to explain the apparent anomaly. In basic physics, the speed of light is a limit that simply cannot be broken in any way: it is inherent in the mathematical equations that govern the laws of particle physics. So finding neutrinos that could travel faster than light was a real shocker to the physics community.
Whether or not the result might have been revolutionary-I didn't think it was so I didn't bother blogging about it at the time-at least one would have hoped that the explanation should have been interesting. For instance, it could have been an extra relativistic effect having to do with the GPS systems that the physicists had used in their experiment but not fully taken into account. In that case, perhaps something could have been learned that would have led to more accurate GPS receivers for everybody. But no, as New Scientist reports, it turns out the true explanation is really the most boring of all: one fiber-optic cable in the vast experimental apparatus had simply been wired too loosely, leading to a delay in an electric signal coming from a detector. The scientists are now looking stupid all over the web-as fast as light can carry the bad news to the rest of the world.