In the 2011 edition of our annual Top 100 Stories of the Year issue, DISCOVER chose the OPERA experiment's announcement of neutrinos that apparently move faster than light as the #1 story. This raises the question of whether the top spot should go to a "discovery" that many researchers think is wrong. After much heated debate, we landed on not one but two answers. First, there is the extraordinary nature of the experiment itself. Shooting shadowy neutrinos through 454 miles of rock and then collecting and precisely measuring them at the other end is a historic technical achievement, one that may turn up new physics even if this particular result does not hold up. Second, and more important, there is the inspiring nature of the claim. This is the most credible evidence in years that our basic understanding of space and time needs an overhaul. No physicist believes that relativity has all the answers and that humans now understand everything there is to know about how the universe works. Someday some experiment will lead to insights that eluded even Einstein. If the neutrino experiment does not achieve that, it certainly points the way.
See our gallery of all top 100 stories of the year here.
Also see the top 100 lists from previous years:2010 Top 5: Worst Oil Spill of All-Time, and a Future Full of Oil First Synthetic Organism Created E.O. Wilson's Theory of Altruism Shakes Up Understanding of Evolution Climate Science Wins a Round, But the Campaign Goes Poorly Family Genomics Links DNA to Disease2009 Top 5: Vaccine Phobia Becomes a Public-Health Threat NASA Braces for Course Correction Meet Ardi, Your First Human Ancestor Stem Cell Science Takes Off Hot on the Trail of the First Galaxies2008 Top 5: The Post-Oil Era Begins The LHC Begins Its Search for the "God Particle" The FDA Tackles Tainted Drugs From China Slime Is Turning the Seas Into Dead Zones Nations Stake Their Claims to a Melting Arctic
