Hosted by Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, this year’s Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate from the LeFrak Theater, pitted some of the experimentalists who claimed to have discovered faster-than-light neutrinos against their strongest critics, as well as other teams who are racing to test Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity with unprecedented precision.

Two leaders of the OPERA collaboration, which stunned the world in September 2011 when it announced data suggesting that neutrinos could travel faster than the speed of light, have stepped down.

The resignation of Antonio Ereditato as spokesperson and Dario Autiero as physics coordinator of the study followed a vote of no confidence, by leaders of the individual groups within the collaboration.

The vote came several weeks (March 2012) after it was revealed that the hotly debated result was probably caused by a faulty cable connection.