Top 10 Science Story of 2011?
SLIDESHOW: Top Science Stories of 2011
Scientific American Top 10 Science Stories of 2011
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Scientific American Top 10 Science Stories of 2011
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#10 IBM's Watson Computer Wins on Jeopardy!
In February IBM's Watson capitalized on its advanced natural language–processing, information retrieval and machine-learning capabilities to soundly defeat two highly accomplished Jeopardy! champions
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#9 The Sun Sets on Solyndra
Solyndra became a symbol of the failures of spending taxpayer dollars to support particular industries. The company, which pioneered cylindrical thin-film solar cells, filed for bankruptcy
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#8 Gene Therapy Makes a Comeback
The field is offering renewed hope for treating genetic disorders
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#7 The Death of Steve Jobs
Jobs's death came at a new peak of success for the company. After many earlier ups and downs, the company had brought to market during the 2000s an array of stunning new offerings
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#6 The End of the Space Shuttle Program
The launch of Atlantis on July 8 concluded the U.S. space shuttle program. After 135 missions flown in five orbiters over three decades
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#5 Hint of Higgs Boson
Physicists said in December that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had seen blips in its data consistent with the existence of the Higgs, a particle that has long been suspected to exist but has never been seen.
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#4 Record-Setting Extreme Weather
In 2011 the U.S. set a record in weather-related damage with 12 catastrophes that cost at least $1 billion each. Pakistan, the Philippines and Australia all had heavy flooding.
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#3 Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos?
CERN scientists claim they've made neutrinos go faster than the speed of light, which since the time of Einstein's theory of special relativity has been considered the cosmic speed limit.
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#2 Technology Fuels the Arab Spring
UofW study concludes that social media technology played a key role in toppling dictators in Egypt and Tunisia, although other experts debate just how much social media tools drove the revolutions.
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The Japan Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis
On March 11, a catastrophic earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people in Japan—and destroyed a nuclear power complex. 88,000 people have been evacuated from an area of 20 kilometers surrounding t
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15 votes
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The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011
Tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors, Twitter-fueled political uprisings, a possible violation of Einsteinian physics--these and other highlights defined this year in science and technology
The respected journal of science couldn't include everything that happened in the busy year and I've narrowed the voting down to the top 3.
Some of our top choices could very well have an immediate effect on our lives. The impact of others may not be felt for years. Some discoveries may vanish altogether. We'll just have to see how things turn out in the years ahead. But no matter what, 2011 held big surprises in science and technology.
Read More: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=t...
Top Opinion
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Horace 2011/12/23 20:20:15Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos?
+8This story was huge, and unlike the other stories it actually had to do with a scientific discovery. If this is true then the entire basis of particle physics is wrong and we might have to go back to the drawing board on relativity. I am not a scientist and I do not know as much about science as I would like to but this is fascinating.
Higgs-like particle discovered.
Actually dealt with true Scientific Discovery (in a thrilling way) ..
and has the most impact as far as the future is concerned (Especially if validated via testing) ..
BTW, do you know of anyone who might have bought one? . . . A Solar Panel, I mean? . . . ???
Ground breaking discovery!
http://www.scientificamerican...
Astrophysicist and cosmologist Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think it will be perceived in retrospect as an embarrassment that this claim received so much publicity—the inevitable consequence of posting a preprint on the Web. Neutrinos were observed from SN 1987A more or less coincidentally with the explosion—not four years earlier, as would have been the case if the velocity difference had been the same as is now claimed (though, of course, the energies of the supernova neutrinos are much lower).
Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
The report of this experiment is pretty impressive, but it bothers me that there is plenty of evidence that all sorts of other particles never travel faster than light, while observations of neutrinos are exceptionally difficult.* It is as if someone said that there are fairies in the bottom of their garden, but they can only be seen on dark, foggy nights.
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University
It is an embarrassment as far as I am concerned. It was not unr...
http://www.scientificamerican...
Astrophysicist and cosmologist Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I think it will be perceived in retrospect as an embarrassment that this claim received so much publicity—the inevitable consequence of posting a preprint on the Web. Neutrinos were observed from SN 1987A more or less coincidentally with the explosion—not four years earlier, as would have been the case if the velocity difference had been the same as is now claimed (though, of course, the energies of the supernova neutrinos are much lower).
Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics
The report of this experiment is pretty impressive, but it bothers me that there is plenty of evidence that all sorts of other particles never travel faster than light, while observations of neutrinos are exceptionally difficult.* It is as if someone said that there are fairies in the bottom of their garden, but they can only be seen on dark, foggy nights.
Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University
It is an embarrassment as far as I am concerned. It was not unreasonable for the experimentalists to submit a paper with an unexplained result. But a press conference on a result, which is extremely unlikely to be correct, before the paper has been refereed, is very unfortunate—for CERN and for science. Once it is shown to be wrong, everyone loses credibility. Neutrino experiments are hard, and systematic errors at the limit of resolution can be significant. Moreover, because the experiment appears to violate Lorentz invariance, which is at the heart of so much known physics, one should be skeptical. One should be additionally skeptical because observations of SN 1987A showed, as I wrote in 1998, that neutrinos and photons travel at the same speed to one part in a billion, several orders of magnitude below the claimed effect. Now, the only way out of that is to have some energy-dependent effect, but all the ones that make sense don't wash here.
http://news.nationalgeographi...