A blog is by nature a place where things move on fast. Articles disappear beyond the horizon in the matter of a week or two, and only rarely get resuscitated by a later article linking them back from oblivion.

At Science 2.0 things are no better than in any other blog sites, with the aggravating feature that there is no "archive" button, nor a "random post" feature. Since I believe that many of my articles are not very connected to the specific time at which they have been written, I have in mind to reorganize the material somehow, when I have the time. However, this looks like a grievious task, since the number of posts I have written here is about 500.

What I can certainly do today, to seal the year 2011 in a summary, is to link ten of the most popular pieces I have written.  So here they are, in order of number of hits (a quantity *very* loosely connected with the importance and the quality of the material - but who am I to argue against that indicator ?).

1) Opera Confirms: Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light! (November 17th)

2) Did Atlas Just See The Higgs ? (April 22nd)

3) Is That a New Massive Particle ? Is That Some Kind of Higgs ? (April 6th)

4) ICARUS Refutes Opera's Superluminal Neutrinos (October 18th)

5) A Six-Sigma Signal of Superluminal Neutrinos From Opera! (September 19th)

6) Firm Evidence of a Higgs Boson at Last! (December 13th)

7) Fundamental Glossary for the Higgs Broadcast (December 9th)
 
8) The Jet Energy Scale as an Explanation of the CDF Signal (April 7th)

9) The New XENON100 Results on Dark Matter (April 14th)

10) LHC Excludes SUSY Theories, Theorists Clinch Hands (February 22nd)

As you see, the top ten list above is dominated by superluminal neutrinos and Higgs searches. As for the number of hits, it varies significantly, from 127,000 of the top hitter to barely more than 10,000 for number 10.

Some additional statistics: the total number of hits in 2011 is about 1,110,000; the month with more hits is November (220,491), followed by April (177,221) and December (about 143,000). As compared with 2010 (total hits 716,000; best month 144,000) there has been a steady increase of the traffic. So I need to thank you all for the support and the interest in high-energy physics. Please continue to contribute to the growth of this site by leaving your feedback and asking questions in the comments thread. And happy 2012!