The Opera experiment at Cern in Geneva appears to indicate that particles called neutrinos travel at a velocity of 20 parts per million above the speed of light, nature's cosmic speed limit.

If the indications are correct, this is a revolutionary discovery that shakes the very foundations of the way physics and nature are understood today.

Cern has a memorandum of understanding with Malta signed in 2008, through which 20 students from the University of Malta have already participated in research under the leadership of Dr Ing Nicholas Sammut.

"Given the potential far-reaching consequences of such a result, independent measurements are needed before the effect can either be refuted or firmly established.

"When a collaboration makes a surprising observation such as this and is unable to account for it, the ethics of science demand that the results be made available to a wider community, to seek scrutiny and to encourage independent experiments, Dr Sammut said.

"Cern has therefore decided to open the result to broader scrutiny and is publishing all data to be sure that there are no other, more mundane, explanations."

The Opera measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms.

For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence.

"The strong constraints arising from these observations make an interpretation of the Opera measurement in terms of modification of Einstein's theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements," Dr Sammut said.