The Top Ten Physics Highlights of 2002 183
Ocelot Wreak writes "Physics Web has a cool summary of The Top Ten Physics Highlights of 2002. These include anti-atoms, neutrino oscillation - a finding that requires new physics beyond the Standard Model, defying the second law of thermodynamics, and using neutrons to measure quantum gravitational effects, amongst others. For some reason, the Slashdot Effect and the latest research on iPod-based Beowulf clusters were not included..."
Sorry, 2nd law wasn't really violated. (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, entropy boils down to probabilities - if you flip a fair coin a gazillion times, you'd expect 50% heads and 50% tails. These folks, in effect, were working at a level where they could detect some of the runs of 100 heads in a row. It's an impressive series of measurements, but won't require a rethink of thermodynamics at all.