Leaders of faster-than-light neutrino team resign
A month after revealing errors in their high-profile claim that subatomic neutrinos had been clocked traveling faster than the speed of light, two leaders of the Italian OPERA collaboration have resigned. Both spokesman Antonio Ereditato of the University of Bern in Switzerland and physics coordinator Dario Autiero of Lyon’s Institute of Nuclear Physics in France, who presented the stunning result to a packed auditorium at CERN (pictured) in September 2011, sent out resignations today. Read more
Best of Nature Network, nature.com blogs and Scitable: 10 – 16 March
GrrlScientist reviews Nature Education’s new introductory biology textbook, Principles of Biology, which she says is affordable, lightweight and never goes out of date: … Read more
Neutrino oscillations measured with record precision
An elusive parameter quantifying the rate of oscillation of ghostly subatomic neutrinos from one type to another has been measured with precision for the first time. Read more
Faster-than-light neutrino measurement has two possible errors
The OPERA collaboration, which made headlines in September with the revolutionary claim to have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light, has identified two possible sources of error in its experiment. If true its result would have violated Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, a cornerstone of modern physics. Read more
Ghosts of the Universe
This week’s guest blogger, Frank Close, is a particle physicist, author and speaker. He is Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including the best-selling Antimatter, and the winner of the Kelvin Medal of the Institute of Physics for his “outstanding contributions to the public understanding of physics.” … Read more