Physics
The Carnival of Physics is an event organized by Gravità Zero and Gravedad Cero, two sites of scientific outreach in Italy and Spain. I participate with three recent articles which are published on their site. Most other contributions are in Italian and Spanish, but you might still find it interesting to visit the two sites (which feature different contributions). Among the sponsors of this enterprise are WIRED, El Pais, Publico, and La Stampa.
Last night the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has circulated the highest-energy beams of particles ever produced. The beam energy has been brought up from the injection energy of 450 GeV to 1.18 TeV, thus outperforming by 20% the flattop beam energy of the Tevatron collider, Fermilab's proton-antiproton collider, which operates at a beam energy of 980 GeV.
Events are developing quickly at CERN these days. LHC is apparently willing to take revenge from a year painstakingly spent repairing the magnets, cleaning up the mess caused by the September 19th 2008 blast, and installing protection…
I had an idea that the theories of the earliest stages of the universe were speculative. I just never really knew how speculative until I really looked at them. The CMB is as far back as we have actual data. From that we have to divine everything.
Consider the two competing theories for a solution to the horizon, flatness, and isotropy problems of the big bang. Cosmic inflation and VSL. These two theories are often considered to be at odds. However they are really the same in one key respect. Both of them speculate about something…
Can a subject be too remote from the domain of traditional physics for physicists to dare applying their methods of research to it? Unlikely. If the objects under investigation in some remote area of research can be subjected to clean and unambiguous experiments, you will likely find physicists dabbling into the area.
Take a flock of birds. If the methods of statistical physics work for a gas consisting of molecules, then why not also for a flock of birds? In fact, a flock of birds is potentially a more suitable and rewarding system to study. Reason being that in a gas of molecules, one can…
"There is no such thing as a theoretical uncertainty. All there is is theoretical stupidity"
Guido Altarelli
A taste of honey, I suggest it is for IBM and the rest of us, to see a molecule. Have you missed the news chockful of opportunities? Before that however, let's remember several people. One chemical engineering graduate, who studied quantum mechanics to develop new rules for the shared electron bond, was Linus Pauling. He mailed in 1931 to the JACS The Nature of the Chemical Bond and received 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex…
What is the size of the universe? How heavy is it? How big can black holes grow? How small are subatomic particles? How many orders of magnitude will I cross when going from the microscopic quantum world to the edge of the universe? Are we humans somewhere in the middle between all these length scales?
Answers to these questions can be found at many places on the internet. However, you can work out all these answers yourself, and in the process learn a few things about the universe. All you need as input is one number. One single number, plus some elementary physics insight in the form of…
This is the second part of a two-part collection of tips for particle physics graduate students. The first part is here.Three: be a fool today if you want to be a guru tomorrow
The third advice I have in store for Jane is maybe the toughest to follow, at least at first. But I do believe it is of critical importance for her to grow, become knowledgeable, and distinguish herself from the rest of the pack.
In large experiments, you never manage to get to know all your colleagues -there simply is not enough time to do that. You will get to know the names and recognize the face of the physics…
My blog is not a place for hot-off-the-press news - in it you are more likely to find discussions on material well digested and thought over. Nevertheless, I do not have the guts to sit on today's news. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has produced its first high-energy proton-proton collisions, in the core of the experiments instrumenting its underground caverns.
It has been a long way since the first design of this extraordinary machine. I was reminded of just how much effort the construction and commissioning took by a slide shown by Ives Sirois at a workshop in Turin today: it is a…
Being a graduate student in particle physics is a tough, stressful job. I know it because I once was one, and I still remember the burden of giving exams, carrying on single-handedly a difficult analysis, and desperately struggling to learn the job of particle physicist, all the while trying to prove my worth to my colleagues. On the personal side, further trouble compounds the situation: one is usually fighting with tight money, stranded away from her family and boyfriend, and finds herself in the company of people whose similar priorities make the otherwise natural impulse of "having fun…