Peter and I are big on entrepreneurs designing businesses that can withstand unpredictable events—those events that mathematician and philosopher Nassim Taleb dubbed Black Swans. This week the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN, reported on an experiment that "...could have a potentially great impact” on science—what an understatement!

Scientists in Switzerland (see the CERN statement) reported that the experiment (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus) had recorded neutrinos (subatomic particles) traveling faster than the speed of light, which would put Einstein’s theories about the speed of light (186,000 miles a second) being the upper limit of speed in the cosmos in question and require that everything that physicists have believed be revised, a clear Black Swan event. Of course, scientists from all over the world will rush to prove that this is an anomaly because no one really wants Einstein’s theories to be wrong. One scientist asserted that if particles travel faster than the speed of light, a hypothetical “observer in a rocket ship traveling near the speed of light..would detect the neutrino before it was emitted---they’d see it going backwards in time.”  Makes the whole notion of time machines more realistic.  Nevertheless, as with any unpredictable event, there will be turmoil until everyone adapts to the new reality or scientists prove that it was merely an aberration.