The CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso experiment sends muon neutrinos through a tunnel at the French-Swiss border in the direction of a detector in Italy, more than 450 miles away. One of the group's experiments, known as OPERA, turned up evidence that neutrinos may travel faster than light.

This year, particle physicists are aiming to get definitive answers to the questions that consumed them last year: Does the Higgs boson, potentially the final fundamental piece of the Standard Model puzzle, actually exist? Could there be new physics beyond the Standard Model, which is arguably the most successful scientific theory of the 20th century?

And just as importantly, can neutrinos really fly faster than light, as findings from Italian lab suggested last year?

"I have difficulty to believe it, because nothing in Italy arrives ahead of time." Sergio Bertolucci, research director at Europe's CERN particle physics center, joked today during a scientific meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

Physicists recapped the past year's results and looked ahead to the next year during sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — and if their expectations come to pass, 2012 could be a big year for textbook editors.

First, about those neutrinos: Experiments conducted by the OPERA collaboration at CERN on the French-Swiss border and at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory clocked particles traveling the 450 miles (732 kilometers) between the labs at speeds slightly higher than the speed of light. That would run counter to a century's worth of special-relativity experiments, which has led most scientists to suspect some subtle factor went unaccounted for in the experiment. However, the skeptics haven't yet shown definitively where where the OPERA scientists went wrong, which "means that essentially they've done their job," Bertolucci said.

He said there were five efforts under way to re-examine or replicate the OPERA team's experimental results. One such effort would involve the MINOS neutrino experiment headquartered at Fermilab in Illinois. Rob Roser, a staff scientist at Fermilab, said the neutrino test required the installation of more sensitive detection equipment, and now that the equipment is ready, data would be collected in April. The results of the replication efforts should be in hand by the end of the year. 

The faster-than-light effect is so subtle that physicists would find it hard to accept even if a similar effect is detected by other experiments. But Bertolucci recalled that similarly unexpected results from the Michelson-Morley experiment, more than a century ago, eventually led to Albert Einstein's revolutionary work on relativity.

"We have to just keep an open mind," Bertolucci said.

Quest for the Higgs
The discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that could explain the phenomenon of mass and masslessness, is the year's other coming attraction in particle physics. For the past few years, Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN's Large Hadron Collider have been in friendly competition to pick up the first hints of the particle's existence. And even though the Tevatron was shut down last September, the teams analyzing the last of their results could still "steal Sergio's thunder," Roser said.

Roser, who is the leader of the Tevatron's CDF collaboration, said scientists were in the "final throes" of data analysis and would announce their results relating to the Higgs boson at a March conference in Italy.

"We will be able to say something interesting, though whether it's that we don’t see it or we do see it remains to be seen," he said.

Late last year, the LHC teams said they saw hints that the Higgs boson might exist at a mass-energy level of 125 billion electron volts, or 125 GeV. Those hints were too tentative to count as a discovery, however, and it sounds as if the same might hold true for the Tevatron results. Roser said he and his colleagues think the Tevatron's detectors could spot a 125 GeV Higgs boson at a 3-sigma confidence level — which is short of the standard for a discovery.

Bertolucci repeated his view that the LHC will determine "by the end of 2012" whether or not the type of Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model exists. Workers are due to clear out of the LHC's underground tunnels next week, and after a cooldown period, the collider will once again start shooting proton beams into detectors at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light.

Bertolucci said the LHC has grown "from an infant to a very, very healthy teenager" over the past year, and CERN's plans call for the beam energies to be ramped up from 3.5 trillion to 4 trillion electron volts this year.

The Higgs boson ranks as one of physics' most famous "known unknowns," Bertolucci said. "But we hope for unknown unknowns," he added. 2012 could be the year that the LHC points to new physics beyond the Standard Model, perhaps having to do with supersymmetry, mini-black holes or extra dimensions.

If the Higgs is found, that would confirm once again that the Standard Model provides the correct description of the subatomic world, and physicists would rejoice. But Bertolucci said "I would be more excited if we don't find it."

"If the Higgs mechanism is not there, another mechanism must be there," he explained. It turns out that particle physicists, like fans of detective novels, love a mystery.

Closing in on the W boson
While we're waiting for the next chapter in the Higgs quest, Fermilab's scientists are getting ready to unveil yet another piece of the subatomic particle puzzle. They'll announce the latest estimate of the mass of the W boson on Feb. 23, Roser said. That's significant, not only because it helps nail down another key value in the Standard Model, but also because an accurate measurement of the W boson can tell physicists more precisely where to look for evidence of the Higgs boson. Symmetry magazine illustrates the point with plush toys in a vise.

More on the frontiers of physics:

• Higgs vs. hype: A mini-guide
• Faster-than-light neutrinos pass test
• Can physicists crack the big puzzle?
• What's a boson? Tour the particle zoo
• Special report on the Big Bang Machine
• Search msnbc.com for the Higgs boson
• 'Virtually Speaking Science': Podcast on weird physics

More from the AAAS meeting in Vancouver:

• Scientists revive sounds of Stonehenge and other sacred spaces
• Gas-drilling gaffes aren't unique to fracking, study says 

Alan Boyle is science editor at msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding the Cosmic Log Google+ page to your circles. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Fred Ullrich / Fermilab

Two experiments at Fermilab's Tevatron collider have come to different conclusions about a scientific mystery.

Two months ago, physicists on the CDF detector team at Fermilab's Tevatron collider, just outside Chicago, reported a mysterious "bump" in the distribution of data from their proton-antiproton collisions, hinting at a non-standard twist in the Standard Model that has governed particle physics for decades.

The anomaly could have been caused by a glitch in the analysis of results from the CDF detector, or it could have been caused by a previously undetected breed of subatomic particle. If the latter turned out to be the case, that would send theorists back to the drawing board — lending weight to exotic concepts such as the existence of a "fifth force" known as technicolor. Such a finding might also suggest that the Higgs boson, the so-called "God Particle," needn't exist.

Since then, additional data from the CDF detector added to the team's confidence. They thought it was increasingly likely that something strange was really happening. But the CDF isn't the only detector at the Tevatron. There's a second detector, known as DZero, which should have seen the bump as well. In fact, the main reason why there are two detectors is so that one detector's data can be confirmed by the other. So researchers around the world anxiously awaited word from the DZero team.

Now the DZero tribe has spoken: They don't see the bump. "Nope, nothing here — sorry," New Scientist quoted DZero co-spokesperson Dmitri Denisov as saying.

The discrepancy may be due to the different computer models that the teams used to interpret what they were seeing in the masses of data from the collider. It's also possible that as more readings are added to the analysis, the margins of uncertainty will narrow down and result in more consistent conclusions. But in any case, it's way too early to write off the Standard Model, or to declare that the God (Particle) is dead.

"This is exactly how science works," DZero co-spokesperson Stefan Söldner-Rembold said in a Fermilab news release. "Independent verification of any new observation is the key principle of scientific research. At the Tevatron, we have two experiments that, by design, can check each other."

The relationship between the CDF and DZero collaborations has been compared to the rivalry between two sports teams — like the Cubs and the White Sox. But the discrepancy between the two findings "must be understood and resolved," Fermilab said. Toward that end, the lab is setting up a task force with representatives from the two teams as well as two Fermilab theorists.

Although this matchup is going into extra innings, the game won't always be tied up. Eventually, Europe's more powerful Large Hadron Collider is likely to come into play and clear up the mystery for good.

More weekend field trips on the Web:

• MIT chemical engineer wins Priestley Medal
• Not Exactly Rocket Science: The Renaissance Man
• Daily Mail: Did Giotto re-create the Shroud of Turin?
• Aviation Week: Chinese probe leaving moon orbit for deep space

The DZero collaboration's paper, "Study of the Dijet Invariant Mass Distribution in ppbar-->W(-->lv)+jj Final States at √(s)=1.96 TeV," has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

The CDF team's paper, "Invariant Mass Distribution of Jet Pairs Produced in Association with a W boson in ppbar Collisions at √(s)=1.96 TeV," has been published in Physical Review Letters.

You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.