Physics

Humanity has not found a fifth force of nature. This is a warning to the media at large. Please do not tell people muon g-2 found a fifth force of nature or make any other such claims.  There are a few serious issues to consider with how the recent muon g-2 experiment results are being reported on. Theoretical Calculations Do Not Agree. Now as I did not do these calculations by my own hand, I will not act like I fully understand them.  In fact, no physicist would act like they fully understand them because they are that hard.  I like the description given on Twitter by @…

Muons are leptons(1), fundamental particles formed in the atmosphere by cosmic rays that are a heavier cousin of electrons. The Standard Model has three generations of leptons; electrons, muons, and tau plus their three neutrinos. The Standard Model is in line with "the big bang" and measurements of the hydrogen/helium ratio - because the number of types of neutrinos affects the prevalence of helium. Things were great, or at least in a kind of intellectual détente on the Standard Model, until recently. Muons were discovered when in 1936 Caltech physicists Anderson and Neddermeyer noticed…

Note: this is an updated version of the article. For the original discussion of the muon anomaly, published before the release of results, please scroll down. The Fermilab g-2 experiment has released today (April 7th, 5PM CET) its results on the measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment. The number they quote differs by 3.3 standard deviations from the theoretical prediction, and is in good agreement with the previous Brookhaven determination of the same quantity. The new result, therefore, is a nice confirmation that the effect first observed in 2001 is not of statistical nature, but…

The remains of what probably was Marni Dee Sheppeard were found last week in the mountains of the west coast of New Zealand, near Otira. Although a positive identification is still pending, this does seem to mean that Marni has died while hiking in her beloved mountains, some time between mid November and December of last year.Dr. Sheppeard was a theoretical physicist. She acquired a Ph.D. at the University of Canterbury after an internship at the Perimeter Institute, with research on Category theory. After her Ph.D. she was hired for some time at the University of Oxford, but her off-…

Almost exactly 15 years ago, I was following a nice conference in the Azores island of San Miguel, where I witnessed with a bit of gloom how the Standard Model was capable of explaining to the tiniest level all observed features not only of electroweak physics observables, but also of low-energy hadronic physics in weak decays of bottom hadrons, from a number of different experiments. I especially remember a talk by Guido Martinelli, among others, who was remarking that if new physics was there, it was really well concealed.Back to my hotel room after the daily session, I wrote a blog post (…

Basic physics can answer this question in a few different ways and it gives an insight into just how hard it will be to get the Ever Given out of the Canal.  First there is the question of how to quantify in scientific terms “hitting hard”.   This can be done with a number of distinctly different but related concepts, momentum (p), force (F) and kinetic energy (T).  Once we consider these numbers the task before the salvage crews can be understood at a very basic level. UPDATE: On social media there is video which shows that the Ever Given appears to be unstuck and is…

Ok, don't get me wrong here - the title of this post is not meant to mock my LHCb colleagues. I have friends there, and the experiment has been doing amazing physics in the past decade, with scores of new particles found, and tough questions posed to the data and to the Standard Model. However, I do mean to stimulate the readers' (but hopefully, also the whole High-Energy Physics community's) critical thinking here - so, calling a "fluke" the new LHCb measurement of a departure from unity of a parameter (R_K) that should be exactly 1.0 in the Standard Model, at the 3.1 standard deviations…

And to complement the title: "...and what the heck is that, anyway?"  I know the feeling. In a sense, I share it with all bystanders, although I belong to the world of "experts". The feeling is a mixture of annoyance and curiosity. Why, did you particle physicists not discover all the fundamental particles of Nature, and with the much heralded 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson as "the missing piece", settled the matter for good? Is it not the Standard Model an as-of-yet-unbroken, although ok, we know it, incomplete, theory of fundamental interactions? And why should we be looking into…

The Italian "Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei" is an old institution, founded in 1603 to promote and cultivate natural science studies. It counted Galileo Galilei as a member, and it has never ceased to pursue its goal. Nowadays, it is an excellence cultural centre and is among the advisors of the President of the Republic. The Accademia divides its scientific activities in many branches, with committees and international relations, prizes, conferences and symposia, publications, and all that. On March 5 it hosted a one-day symposium on Artificial Intelligence, which counted a very…

Wait, I can almost hear you say it: "Xi_b what? Let's move on, where's the sports section?" Ok, if you need to, please go. But do not underestimate excited Xi_b baryons. They are a helluva lot of fun to watch as they pop into existence and then decay in stages, as if stripping piece by piece, throwing out opaque layers of matter one by one, and finally exposing their naked beauty in full bloom. Are you getting aroused yet? we are talking about a haDR-on here, don't be mistaken, but the matter is not less sexy than the stuff you'd get on the sports section anyway. For, you know, there is…