Science Breakthroughs in 2011: Cancer Vaccines, 3-D Printing, and More

According to the laws of the universe, nothing can move faster than the speed of light. But in September physicists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research reported that elusive subatomic particles called neutrinos did exactly that and broke the ultimate speed limit. The claim sparked a widespread and heated debate among physicists. Many of them are skeptical of the result because it hasn’t been independently verified. (Another experiment that will send neutrinos from Chicago to the U.S.-Canadian border is being planned in order to try and settle the dispute.) If neutrinos are found to break a fundamental law of physics, it could have tremendous implications: physicists would have to alter the laws of physics to account for the strange behavior of neutrinos or even consider the bizarre, but less likely, possibility that time is moving in reverse.