2011 Science News of the Year: Atom & Cosmos

Not so fast, neutrinos

News of particles zipping along faster than light (SN: 10/22/11, p. 18) was met with universal skepticism — including from the physicists in Italy who reported the results. But the Gran Sasso National Laboratory’s OPERA team hasn’t found any source of error that could explain how the neutrinos appeared to shave 60 nanoseconds off of light-speed travel time while covering the 730 kilometers from the CERN physics laboratory near Geneva to Gran Sasso.