TurkmenPost

When it comes to April Fool’s Day, Europe’s media are having the last laugh.

Britain’s Daily Mail reported that British Prime Minister Tony Blair repainted the traditionally black front door of his Downing Street office “socialist red” to match his Labour party colors. The Times ran a story about a new song-activated credit card security system called “Chip ‘n’ Sing.”

Neither is true of course, but two centuries after the tradition began, media outlets still try to dupe the gullible in an unofficial yearly competition.

Some say April Fool’s Day started with the creation of the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century, which changed the starting date of the new year from April 1 — or April Fool’s Day — to Jan. 1; others point to Indian and Roman festivals that celebrated tomfoolery.

Another theory dates back to the 17th century, when British villagers would strap an effigy of the town’s fool to a horse and parade it through the village.

Some of Saturday’s better efforts:

— The Rome daily Il Messaggero reported that a new group in the city of Aquil had persuaded officials to cover up monuments in the main square by dressing the naked men and women with clothes of bronze.

— Sweden’s daily Dagens Nyheter scared thousands of bicyclists by claiming that Stockholm’s city government would impose speed limits of 12 mph on bikes in the inner city.

— The Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets turned the day into a contest, offering free subscriptions to callers who identified false stories. Its gag stories included a secret research institute where Kremlin candidates to succeed President Vladimir Putin undergo scientific testing, and plans for a parliament building where lawmakers’ offices would boast a bar, a balcony and a Jacuzzi.

via newsvine.

Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass.

This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.

The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision.

Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe. But scientists know rustratingly little about these fundamental particles. The findings build on work carried out by Japanese physicists.

Neutrinos are sometimes described as "ghost particles" because they can pass through space, the Earth’s atmosphere and the Earth itself with almost no interaction with normal matter.

This makes studying them very difficult.

There are three kinds - or "flavours" - of neutrinos: muon, tau and electron.

To examine their properties, scientists created muon neutrinos in a particle accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Illinois, US.

A high intensity beam of these particles was fired through a particle detector at Fermilab, and then to another particle detector 724km (450 miles) away in a disused mine in Soudan, US.

via bbc.