Neutrino Tracks shown from an experiment - Source: CERN

If you’ve browsed around the net today at all, I’m sure you’ve seen your fair share of links to the “Best Science stories of 2011″ or something to that extent. Wired has posted a really nice gallery online showcasing some of the highlights, such as the purported “faster-than-light” neutrino story (neutrinos shown above) that nearly got the scientific world in a flux over the possibility of Einstein’s famous work being trumped thru a new discovery. Turns out the results were a fluke as a result of relativistic interference in time measurement where the recordings were taken. Alas…

Here’s my quick and short best science of 2011 roundup:

1. Honeybees have emotions : Apparently, we’re not the only ones in this world that can find the glass half-empty. Does this mean we’ll finally eschew idiotic ideas of “innate” superiority sometime? Let’s hope…
2. First signs of the Higgs Boson : The LHC is finally living up to physicists’ hopes and dreams in revealing more and more about the intrinsic nature of matter in the Universe. I hope this follows thru to 2012 with some exciting news that helps us unify a standard model of physics that is finally consistent w/ current measurements of space phenomena. It would be nice to see us move on to greater elements beyond this – perhaps discovering a “mass” effect, even. (/swoon)
3. Potentially Earth-like planet may have just the right temperature for life : Another big find in the space arena. Since we’ve just hit 7 billion plus people on the Earth this past year, and considering the fact that it only took us 12 years to get to that point since 6 billion people were on this planet, extrasolar colonization is something we will have to look to doing in the future in order to guarantee our long-term survival. The discovery of Kepler-22b as a similar M-class planet that can support life and has environmental conditions similar to ours is a huge step forward towards humanity opening (or more accurately, giving in to) more possibilities thru science to make leaving our world happen at some point in the future.
4. Cell-Aging Hack Opens Longevity Research Frontier : Right on the heels of a Kurzweil prediction, it would seem. From the article: “A new experiment that flushed old, broken-down cells from the bodies of mice, slowing their descent into the infirmities of age…the findings mark the first time that cellular senescence (aging or the act of growing old) — its importance debated by biologists for decades — has been experimentally manipulated in an animal, demonstrating a fantastic new tool for studying its role in human aging.”

Other sites that had Top Science of 2011 stories: Science News - I’ll update this list w/ more soon. I think it’s a matter of still getting those final stories out since the year’s not technically done yet. Popular Science had a best of 2011 retrospective, but it was more gear-oriented and not necessarily concept or finding-oriented.