Boing Boing 

Quilts inspired by the Large Hadron Collider

Last week, while I was on a train, researchers at CERN announced that neutrinos are probably not traveling faster than the speed of light. Last year, as you'll recall, the OPERA experiment clocked the neutrinos breaking that speed limit. Unfortunately, it looks like those measurements were probably caused by one or more problems with the GPS system used to synchronize clocks between the neutrinos' point of origin and where they were speeding off to.

That's disappointing news. To make up for it, I offer you this art chaser—a gallery of beautiful quilts inspired by CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

The quilts are the work of artist Kate Findlay, and they're completely amazing. The one pictured here is called "Inner Eye." It's based on ATLAS, one of the major detectors built to encircle the Large Hadron Collider and collect information on what's going on inside it. Comparing the photo with the quilt makes both images doubly awesome.

See the rest of the quilts at Symmetry Magazine

Via Alexandra Witze

Best. research paper abstract. evar.

On, where astronomers and physicists post pre-publication research papers, the possibility of neutrinos that travel faster than the speed of light has led to dozens of new papers, including this one. So, even if FTL neutrinos end up being disproved, we at least know for certain that they will be responsible for one of the best research paper abstracts ever written.

Via Alan Boyle

Once more, with feeling

A repeat of the faster-than-light neutrino experiment turned up the same result. Bear in mind, this was performed by the same group of researchers that performed the original experiment. So it's not quite the same thing as if the results had been reproduced by an entirely different team of scientists. But it is a step forward in what will be a long process. So far, we still can't rule out that neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light.