Physics

If the distribution of dark matter in the region near Earth is lower than it is usually assumed then the interpretation of null results of direct detection efforts must be reconsidered. Astrophysicists have been searching for hard evidence of dark matter for decades.  The most favored model has been that dark matter consist  weakly interacting massive particles or WIMPS.  The basic assumption has been that dark matter is more or less evenly spread through the galaxy with no large scale variations.  The work of C. Moni Bidin, R. Smith, G. Carraro, R. A. Méndez, and M.…

I am using my blog to advertise the opening of PhD positions in Padova University, to work at several research projects and obtain a PhD in Physics. These are offered to Chinese students through the China Scolarship Council. More information is available at this link.If you are a bright Chinese student who speaks at least some English and is willing to spend three years working in data analysis for Higgs physics in the CMS experiment, I will take you - so what are you waiting for ? Applications close soon! Below is a table with deadlines and information.

Relativistic quantum field theory does not apply to everyday life.  It doesn't apply to one beam circling the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  When two beams traveling in opposite directions smash together, that is when the crazy magic of relativistic quantum field theory dominates.  In order to calculate the odds of scattering events, the sum of all possible histories must be accounted for.  If one figures out the odds of an electron going forward in time to interact, then its antiparticle the positron going backward in time must also be added in.  There is so much…

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford By Ian Bailey, Lancaster University Scientists working on an experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US have taken a step forward in developing a technology which could significantly reduce the size of particle accelerators. The technology is able to accelerate particles more rapidly than conventional accelerators at a much smaller size. One of the most impressive aspects of particle accelerators used for research such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is its physical size. Yet, even with a circumference of 27km,…

Last year, two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced the finding of a new elementary particle - the long-theorized Higgs particle.  Many calculations indicate that the particle discovered last year in the CERN particle accelerator was indeed the famous Higgs particle. Physicists agree that the CERN experiments did find a new particle that had never been seen before, but an international team say they are not convinced it was the Higgs particle.  Maybe it just looks like it. And maybe it is not alone.  The research team analyzed the existing scientific data from the…

Since 1999, a conjecture by Asher Peres, the 'inventor' of quantum teleportation, that the weakest form of quantum entanglement can never result in the strongest manifestation of the phenomenon, has been debated.  Peres thought about the phenomenon of quantum entanglement and its different manifestations. When two objects (take photons, for example) are entangled, they remain correlated regardless of the distance that separates them physically: whether they are separated by a millimeter or by several kilometers, any action done to one of them will immediately affect the other. To check…

Blame Jack Kirby and Stan Lee for the word "formuloop".  They did not devise it.  They made a comic book about four people who went into space and then returned to Earth with magic super powers.   Such a fantastic time I had reading their adventures as a kid.  One of their catch phrases was "swell foop", which is a type of Spoonerism, and that has nothing to do with "formuloop" other than that my word was an inevitable evolution of "swell foop".  But if that doesn't make it clear, then let me put the relationship this way: we strive to relate what we see to what we…

Open Access Post Publication Peer Review as done on the Winnower is a bold experiment which my new model for reconciling General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory has tested.  The model I propose is simply a conceptual inversion.  Instead of making General Relativity into a QFT by some means, instead we can attempt to make QFT even more relativistic than it already is.  (Since QFT is a result of formulating quantum mechanics so that it obeys Special Relativity)  This idea like every new idea meets with a deal of healthy skepticism.  Even I am skeptical of it, out of…

Results of a new search for single top production and large missing energy have been published by the ATLAS collaboration in a recent preprint. I think it is worthwhile to have a look at the idea behind this new search, as the signature of invisible particles produced in LHC collisions and escaping the detectors is important in many of the current and future investigations of beyond-the-standard-model physics. The idea that new physics may first manifest itself by the indirect signal left by a particle which does not interact with ordinary matter has roots in the cosmological observations of…

String theory is a hypothetical framework where particle physics is replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It was originally proposed as a way to explain the strong force, then advocates re-purposed it for quantum gravity, and now it is being reconfigured again, with "commutation rules" of quantum mechanics. The heart of what became string theory began in the early 20th century and then got jumbled in with a lot of philosophical ideas - 'what if there are dimensions we can't see?' A fifth dimension was a nice discussion, but without being detected it was just that. As the century…