• First T2K neutrino event observed at Super-Kamiokande

    Updated: 2010-02-25 16:30:59
    Physicists from the Japanese-led multinational T2K collaboration announced today that they had made the first detection of a neutrino which had travelled all the way under Japan from their neutrino beamline at the J-PARC facility in Tokai village (about an hour north of Tokyo by train) to the gigantic Super-Kamiokande underground detector near the west coast of Japan, 295 km (185 miles) away from Tokai.

  • Fermilab’s CDF, DZero cite banner year at the Tevatron

    Updated: 2010-02-24 20:04:30
    As physicists from Fermilab’s Tevatron collider experiments, CDF and DZero, prepare to share their newest results at upcoming winter 2010 physics conferences, they took a few moments recently to look back on the accomplishments of 2009. “By every measure,” said DZero spokesperson and University of Manchester physicist Stefan Soldner-Rembold, “the Tevatron set new records and built [...]

  • US scientists analyze first LHC data through the Open Science Grid

    Updated: 2010-02-23 10:34:01
    As the LHC begins collisions at even higher energies in the coming month, thousands of experimental collaborators worldwide will want to study the data. The successes of 2009 suggest that the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, and the Open Science Grid, are fully prepared for the challenge.

  • Are Quarks And Leptons Elementary Or Composite ?

    Updated: 2010-02-21 22:14:35
    There are twenty-four elementary fermions in the standard model. Sure, they are arranged in a very tidy, symmetrical structure of three families of eight fermions (two leptons and six quarks), which is not too unpleasant to behold. And of course, if one is willing to forget the fact that the quantum-chromodynamical charge of quarks does make them different, then the picture is even tidier: 12 fermions, six of them quarks and six of them leptons, arranged in three families of four. read more

  • This week at the LHC: Preparing for the first protons of 2010

    Updated: 2010-02-19 19:52:00
    After over a month of preparation, the Large Hadron Collider could be circulating proton beams again as early as next week. Preparation during the accelerator's winter shutdown has focused heavily on readying the LHC’s quench detection and protection systems, which keep the accelerator magnets from overheating.

  • New NOvA building pops up almost overnight

    Updated: 2010-02-18 20:27:29
    The curvy MINOS surface building at Fermilab has a new neighbor. The new neutrino experiment in town recently moved in right next door.

  • Fermilab physicists honored for uniting physics and cosmology

    Updated: 2010-02-18 10:28:26
    Three decades ago, no one had ever heard of particle astrophysics. How could the tiniest pieces of matter and the biggest objects in the universe coexist in a single field of science? Last month, the American Institute of Physics and the American Astronomical Society honored two scientists who, more than any others, made particle astrophysics, if not a household name, a new scientific discipline.

  • Extreme jets take new shape

    Updated: 2010-02-17 19:26:16
    Jets of particles streaming from black holes in far-away galaxies operate differently than previously thought, according to a study published today in Nature. The new study reveals that most of the jet's light—gamma rays, the universe's most energetic form of light—is created much farther from the black hole than expected and suggests a more complex shape for the jet.

  • Fermi telescope closes in on source of cosmic rays

    Updated: 2010-02-16 15:48:44
    New images from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope show where supernova remnants emit radiation a billion times more energetic than visible light. The images bring astronomers a step closer to understanding the source of some of the universe’s most energetic particles--cosmic rays.

  • A dam interesting experiment

    Updated: 2010-02-15 21:13:08
    Tests of whether Newton's Law of gravity is violated are sometimes conducted in unusual places.

  • Constraints On The Higgs Mass From The Muon Anomaly

    Updated: 2010-02-14 22:33:03
    One of the positive side-effects of preparing a seminar is being forced to get up-to-date with the latest experimental and theoretical developments on the topic. And this is of particular benefit to lazy bums like myself, who prefer to spend their time playing online chess than reading arxiv preprints. It happened last week, in the course of putting together a meaningful discussion of the state of the art in global electroweak fits to standard model observables, and their implications for the unknown mass of the Higgs boson: by skimming the hep-ph folder I found a very recent paper by a colleague in Padova, which I had shamefully failed to notice in the last couple of careless visits. read more

  • The Fascinating Search For Rare W Decays

    Updated: 2010-01-30 11:03:26
    W bosons are amazingly interesting objects. Almost thirty years after their discovery -by Carlo Rubbia and his collaborators of the UA1 experiment at CERN- they continue to provide critical information on the theory of electroweak interactions. The front of particle physics has moved quite a bit further from 1983, and yet the weapons we use todat to try and conquer unexplored land have not changed much. Today I wish to summarize one particular search that has been done by the CDF experiment at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider, one which tries to catch W bosons as they decay in a very uncommon way. read more

  • Are There Cosmic Microwave Anomalies?

    Updated: 2010-01-29 02:10:24
    No. The WMAP team has just released a new set of papers based upon seven years of data from their experiment. For a summary of how this new data has sharpened some of their previous results, see the Cosmological Interpretation paper. They have also gone over claims by many groups to have found deviations [...]

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