As of June 2011, scientists at CERN have succeeded in trapping atoms of anti-hydrogen for more than 15 minutes: sufficient time to study them in a little more detail.

I can at least try to let you know what I understand, in broad strokes, why this news item is important and hope to impart my sense of appreciation of this milestone.

The reason why this is important is because it is believed that the universe came into existence from nothing. Studies in Quantum Physics indicate that out of nothing, certain particles can come into existence for brief moments. They come into existence, however, with the presence of their anti-thesis. So in effect, +1 (Matter) and -1 (Anti-Matter) is still equal to zero. Perhaps the same had been true with the Big Bang, the only difference between is that for a very, very small percentage of all the particles that existed during the Big Bang a few managed to remain in existence because they did not manage to come in contact with their anti-thesis before their anti-thesis disappeared. What has remained is the matter that makes up everything in the universe today.

Einstein's theories show that nothing can travel faster than light. However, just very recent results from CERN, the large Hadron Collider in Europe, show that Neutrinos they sent through the ground from Cern toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km (454 miles) away in Italy. They have re-checked their methods and their calculations to ensure that the results are correct and they are sending their results to other science agencies to independently verify their findings. This could well be one of the biggest discoveries in Science because its implications are enormous.

How? Well for many reasons. One example is that the idea of time travel (not merely changing speeds of time between different reference points) is currently deemed not possible because of the idea that nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

Also, by finding out why this could be, scientists might be able to discover more things we did not know about.

Update: 23 Oct 2011

Ronald van Elburg of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands posted in a paper posted to the physics pre-print website arXiv.org, argues that the Italian scientists failed to account for the fact that the GPS satellite they used as their timekeeping device is moving.

Jupiter is a planet believed to be composed mostly of gas. It is characterised by bands of different layered and coloured gasses. Last year, after Jupiter hid behind the sun, away from our vision for three months, it emerged with one of its major bands missing. As surprising as this is, the planet actually losses or gains a band every fifteen years on average. We (our scientists) still do not know why.