The recent controversy over the new data suggesting that neutrinos move faster than light has thrown up some fun stuff. This includes a candidate for shortest abstract of a scientific paper.

Almost all scientific journals require that a paper have not only a title, in this case “Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?”, but also an abstract. This is typically 100 to say 400 words which briefly summarise the most important findings as well as often providing some context. However the authors of this paper, Berry, Brunner, Popescu and Shukla, decided to keep it brief. Very brief.

Their title was a question, their abstract an answer: “Probably not.”. Two words, eleven letters. So, is this the shortest abstract ever? No. Coincidentally, “No.” is actually the shortest abstract ever, at a mere one word and two letters, as far as I know. This is for a paper by Hajdukovic and Satz.

Sometimes, good communication means paring things down to the basics. I wanted a blog title that indicated approval but was as short as possible, but had to use one more letter than Hajdukovic and Satz.