First story is one everyone’s probably heard:
Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) — A neutrino beam appears to have moved faster than the speed of light in an experiment whose results need to be confirmed independently, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, said.
My go-to for understanding this kind of thing is Ethan Siegel, who concludes (at the end of an excellent post, which I recommend):
Now, something fishy and possibly very interesting is going on, and there will certainly be scientists weighing in with new analysis in the coming weeks. But in all the excitement of this group declaring that they observe neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light, don’t forget what we’ve already observed to much greater precision! And be skeptical of this result, and of the interpretation that neutrinos are moving faster than light, until we know more.
Ok, we wait for more.
Next up is on genetics:
The top line finding seems to be that Europeans and East Asians are closer to each other than either is to the Australian Aboriginal. I’ve seen this result before. But, a major issue which is resolved here with their methods is that Aboriginals are closer to East Asians than they are to Europeans!
Every time I read about this the divergence of humanity seems to get more and more complicated. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. The blue dots in the image below are the source genomes that were sequenced to develop the flows in red and black.
More here. Neat!
Not Unreasonable 