The results of the LUX experiment are out - and they are negative: no dark matter signal has been spotted by the extra sensitive detector. This is a normal day for you and me, but a gloomy day for…

The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is trying to identify the nature of dark matter, an invisible substance that physicists believe is all around us, making up most of the matter in the…

Do you remember the dijet bump at 140 GeV that CDF published in March 2011 ? This was a surprising excess in the mass distribution of pairs of jets found in events containing a leptonic W boson decay…

At some point the exact number of particles in a group becomes irrelevant. But does when a collection of elements forms a "heap" ? In recent experiments using ultracold atoms, Heidelberg physicists…

Just a quick link today, to acknowledge an interesting report on the life of physics students in Greece and the present situation with Universities there. And of course, if you wish to practice your…

Researchers have made a step toward the creation of materials that can be 'tuned' just by shining a light on them - they have succeeded in producing and measuring a coupling of photons and electrons…

"The question is not whether these boards will catch fire or not. The question is when they will". (Said by Fermilab electronics experts who were members of a review panel that provided advice on the…

Yesterday evening I chanced to attend, invited by a friend, the opening of the 2013-2014 academic year of the university of Venice "Ca' Foscari", which was held at the Malibran theater. It was the…

Please note: spoiler information in this article! The recent movie "Gravity", featuring the two hollywood stars George Clooney and Sandra Bullock, is a very interesting experiment in film-making. I…

To many the label "scientist" has a residue of meaning a certain kind of white male.  Western society in particular loves labels and loves to put people in tiny boxes.  This story is about…