• Today’s physics news: Curiosity finds first evidence of water; Biodegradable electronics

    Updated: 2012-09-28 10:47:00
    Physics news for Friday 28 September 2012 Mars rover Curiosity finds first evidence of water Nasa‘s Mars rover, Curiosity, dispatched to learn if the most Earth-like planet in the solar system was suitable for microbial life, has found clear evidence its landing site was once awash in water, a key ingredient for life, scientists said. [...]

  • The Einstein papers: A physicist in turbulent seas

    Updated: 2012-09-27 16:50:54
    Albert Einstein is rightly known as one of the most prolific scientific geniuses of our time. But in between formulating his theories of Special and General Relativity, establishing the equivalence of matter and energy, making major contributions to quantum theory, and even explaining Brownian motion (thereby supporting the study of statistical mechanics and lending credence to atoms as physical objects instead of just useful models), Einstein found time to write. And write. And write some more.

  • Researchers propose machine for a clean, mean neutrino beam

    Updated: 2012-09-27 06:00:00
    About 60 physicists met at Fermilab this past weekend to discuss an idea that might define the future of neutrino research. The scientists are interested in creating clean, precise beams of neutrinos by sending muons—the more massive cousins of electrons—to the racetrack. Neutrinos are surprising little particles. They have mass, despite predictions to the contrary. They come in at least three types, called flavors, and they shift from flavor to flavor as they move.

  • Newswire: Fermilab - QuarkNet program receives $6.1 million NSF award to advance science education

    Updated: 2012-09-27 05:00:00
    The University of Notre Dame has received a five-year, $6.1 million award from the National Science Foundation to support the nationwide QuarkNet program, which has inspired teachers and students alike for 15 years. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory plays a leading role in managing the QuarkNet program, which receives additional funding from the U.S. Department of Energy. QuarkNet uses particle physics experiments to provide valuable research, training, and mentorship opportunities for high school teachers. More than 500 teachers across the United States participate in the program.

  • Today’s physics news: Ada Lovelace day Wikipedia edit-a-thon, Curiosity gets up close to Martian rock

    Updated: 2012-09-26 01:26:00
    Physics news for Wednesday 26 September 2012. Women of Wikipedia edit planned The Wikipedia profiles of women in technology and engineering will be updated at an “edit-a-thon” held at the Royal Society next month as part of Ada Lovelace day. Ada Lovelace day aims to raise the profile of women currently working in the fields [...]

  • Streaming science

    Updated: 2012-09-25 06:00:00
    When it comes to designing an experiment that looks for the universe’s smallest particles, bigger is better. But when the experiment is so big that it spans multiple states, sometimes scientists need to find a way to keep everyone in the loop. That’s why the NOvA experiment is broadcasting real-time video showing the construction of its 14,000-ton neutrino detector.

  • DOE advances US ATLAS, US CMS detector upgrade plans

    Updated: 2012-09-24 21:52:32
    The US Department of Energy recently expressed support for continued US involvement in work on the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider. On Sept. 18, DOE gave their first stage of approval, Critical Decision-0, to plans for DOE-funded scientists from the United States to participate in upgrades to both detectors scheduled to be completed by 2018. DOE gives CD-0 approval to projects that meet their mission need and that are judged to have worthy scientific goals.

  • Today’s physics news: Meteors sighted in the UK; Endeavour rests in LA

    Updated: 2012-09-24 10:58:37
    Here’s the physics news for Monday 24 September 2012. Meteors’ sighted in skies across UK People from across the UK have reported seeing bright objects in the night sky, thought to be meteors or “space junk”. Coastguards in Northern Ireland took calls from people who saw the objects from Coleraine on the north coast, to [...]

  • Week 37 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-09-24 06:00:00
    This photo of the station manager placing a flag at the ceremonial South Pole exemplifies the cold, windy week they just had there. Cold…wind…so what’s new? Actually, one piece of news is that their freezer broke down, requiring them to remove all the food and take it outside for safekeeping. A fine solution given the location, but solving one problem did create another—ice cream that couldn’t be served without an extended warm-up.

  • Today’s physics news: Ponytail physics; focus on primary maths pays off

    Updated: 2012-09-21 11:18:03
    Physics news for Friday 21 September 2012. Ig Nobel honours ponytail physics A UK/US team that came up with an equation to predict the shape of a ponytail has earned itself an Ig Nobel. Patrick Warren, Raymond Goldstein, Robin Ball and Joe Keller picked up their prestigious award at a sellout gala ceremony at Harvard [...]

  • African School of Physics student awarded international fellowship

    Updated: 2012-09-20 15:26:48
    As a graduate student, Laza Rakotondravohitra has already been a part of a couple of firsts in particle physics. He attended the first African School of Physics. He is also setting the bar high as the first international student from Madagascar to conduct research at Fermilab. Over the next three years, Rakotondravohitra (pictured below) will study under the supervision of Fermilab scientist Jorge Morfin as he works toward his doctorate in physics, which he will earn from Madagascar’s primary public university, the University of Antananarivo.

  • Newswire: Professor Agnieszka Zalewska Elected President of CERN Council

    Updated: 2012-09-20 05:00:00
    Geneva, 20 September 2012. CERN[1] Council today elected Professor Agnieszka Zalewska as its 21st President for a period of one year renewable twice, with a mandate starting on 1 January 2013. Professor Zalewska takes over from Michel Spiro who comes to the conclusion of his three-year term at the end of December.

  • Second Fermilab muon experiment achieves first stage of approval

    Updated: 2012-09-19 14:08:41
    Fermilab’s plans for creating a Muon Campus with top-notch Intensity Frontier experiments have received a big boost. The Department of Energy has granted Mission Need approval to the Muon g-2 project, one of two experiments proposed for the new Muon Campus (shown in rendering above). The other proposed experiment, Mu2e, is a step ahead and already received the next level of DOE approval, known as Critical Decision 1.

  • Klystron

    Updated: 2012-09-18 06:00:00
    Klystrons are what make linear accelerators—as well as radar, cancer treatments and some radio telescopes—work. Invented at Stanford University about 75 years ago, klystrons convert electricity into radio and microwave energy, a far more powerful version of what’s generated by your kitchen microwave oven.

  • World’s most powerful digital camera records first images

    Updated: 2012-09-17 15:19:20
    Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time. That light may hold within it the answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics—why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

  • Newswire: Fermilab - World's most powerful digital camera opens eye, records first images in hunt for dark energy

    Updated: 2012-09-17 05:00:00
    Eight billion years ago, rays of light from distant galaxies began their long journey to Earth. That ancient starlight has now found its way to a mountaintop in Chile, where the newly-constructed Dark Energy Camera, the most powerful sky-mapping machine ever created, has captured and recorded it for the first time.

  • NOvA: Exploring neutrino mysteries

    Updated: 2012-09-12 18:52:45
    Scientists, engineers and technicians on the NOvA collaboration posed on Monday, Sept. 10, in front of the newly installed first block of what will be the largest neutrino detector in the world. The 14-kiloton detector will allow physicists to study a beam of neutrinos from 500 miles away at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. But what are they looking for? Physicists explain in a new Fermilab video.

  • Week 36 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-09-12 06:00:00
    These are sastrugi. Who doesn’t love to learn a new word? Sastrugi are wavelike ridges of hard snow formed by the wind. Visually they are reminiscent of sand dunes but they are not as easily shaped by the wind as sand is. It’s pretty light in this photo, with the sun beginning to rise at the pole, yet the moon is still hanging in there at the moment—enjoy some more of the views.

  • Newswire: CERN - European particle physics refreshes long-term strategy

    Updated: 2012-09-12 05:00:00
    Krakow, 12 September 2012. Some 500 particle physicists meeting in Krakow this week have been debating the long-term future of their field at the CERN Council Open Symposium on the European Strategy for Particle Physics. This symposium comes at a turning point for the field, following hot on the heels of the announcement in July by CERN experiments ATLAS and CMS of the discovery of a new particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson: a discovery that sets the direction for future particle physics research. Although the LHC results have dominated the headlines, other areas, such as neutrino physics, have also seen important advances over recent years.

  • Newswire: INFN/Cabibbolab - A new partner joins SuperB from Russia

    Updated: 2012-09-11 05:00:00
    A major agreement was recently signed between the Nicola Cabibbo Laboratory Consortium (CLC) and the Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics (BINP) in Novosibirsk, Russia. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will enable the joint development of projects for the construction of a SuperB Factory (B particles factory) in Rome and a SuperC-Tau Factory (C and tau particles factory) in Novosibirsk.

  • Scientists already planning for LHC long shutdown

    Updated: 2012-09-10 20:58:26
    The Large Hadron Collider will go into a long shutdown early next year to allow scientists and technicians to prepare it for higher collision energy in 2015. It has been running at 7 TeV; scientists plan for it to reemerge at upward of 13 TeV. Beginning in February of 2013, highly coordinated teams will spend 20 months preparing its equipment for the change.

  • Looking for Extra Dimensions at the LHC

    Updated: 2012-09-07 19:13:29
    Phd Comics, channeling physicists Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng, explains how the LHC isn’t anywhere near done yet. Now that the Higgs(like) boson has been found, we’ll be looking for all sorts of other things, such as extra dimensions of space.

  • Crews complete first block of North America’s most advanced neutrino experiment

    Updated: 2012-09-06 20:07:54
    Technicians in Minnesota have completed the first block of a detector that will be part of the largest, most advanced neutrino experiment in North America.

  • Week 35 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-09-05 06:00:00
    One of the IceCube winterovers stands in front of the IceCube Lab with outstretched arms to … a) sing the aurora’s praises, b) perform daily calisthenics, or c) scare off potential migrating birds. Well, whatever they’re doing, they have quite the backdrop for doing it—frost-covered research lab, long-stretching aurora, and star-studded sky. Here are some more photos from the week, showing the moon, stars, and auroras, as well as the beginning signs of the sun’s appearance.

  • Guest Post: Doug Finkbeiner on Fermi Bubbles and Microwave Haze

    Updated: 2012-09-04 16:22:38
    When it comes to microwaves from the sky, the primordial cosmic background radiation gets most of the publicity, while everything that originates nearby is lumped into the category of “foregrounds.” But those foregrounds are interesting in their own right; they tell us about important objects in the universe, like our own galaxy. For nearly a [...]

  • Pushing boundaries

    Updated: 2012-09-04 06:00:00
    Since our very first issue, symmetry has aimed to be at the forefront of science reporting, outreach and design. I think we’ve done quite well, and the results of a recent survey suggest that our readers agree. To keep things that way, we’re making a few changes—not to the type or quality of our articles, but to how we deliver them.

  • Newswire: John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science - John Adams Institute is expanding

    Updated: 2012-08-31 05:00:00
    The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science is expanding, with a new research base at Imperial College London joining two existing centres at Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of Oxford. The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science is a centre of excellence in the UK for advanced and novel accelerator technology, providing expertise, research, development and training in accelerator techniques, and promoting advanced accelerator applications in science and society. The JAI was created in October 2004 initially as a joint venture between the Departments of Physics in the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London, and is operating with enabling support by the Science and Technology Facility Council (STFC).

  • Week 34 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-08-29 06:00:00
    It’s not just ice and starry skies. There are people down there, and look what they’re up to—a regular old county fair, pie eating contest and all. They also share power plant watch duties—the photos below show the way there and the generators found inside. It all seems relatively ordinary, until you go back outside and take in glorious scenes like these.

  • Neil Armstrong

    Updated: 2012-08-25 21:38:40
    Has died at age 82. Perhaps to honor his memory we can resolve as a society to continue to do inspiring things.

  • Week 33 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-08-23 06:00:00
    IceCube winterovers were busy this week with various sessions for emergency response team training—fire, trauma, and technical rescue. The night sky was busy, too, filling itself up with stars. Here they are over several views of the South Pole station. The bottom photo shows the starry sky above the turn off point to the IceCube Lab on the Dark Sector road.

  • A Few Powers of Ten

    Updated: 2012-08-22 17:10:42
    Via the endlessly enjoyable It’s Okay to Be Smart, here’s a gif image that zooms in by about three orders of magnitude. (Not sure of the original source.) We start by looking at an amphipod, a tiny shrimplike critter about a millimeter across. For some reason (vanity?) it’s decorated by an even tinier diatom, a [...]

  • Gravitational Waves in Five Years

    Updated: 2012-08-20 21:15:24
    LIGO, the gravitational-wave observatory, is currently on ice. After running successfully (although without actually detecting any gravitational waves) through 2007, it got a mini-upgrade and ran as Enhanced LIGO in 2009 and 2010. But in October 2010 it shut off, and the original detectors were disassembled. Not because anything was wrong, but because of a [...]

  • The Plot Of The Week - Z' Not Here

    Updated: 2012-08-20 11:46:38
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  • The Invader

    Updated: 2012-08-19 22:53:31
    Opening panels of a wordless and moving story about a young Space Invader. Worth a click. Via Zack Stentz.

  • Week 32 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-08-15 06:00:00
    It was an uneventful week for the winterovers, but not for the moon. Here’s a bright moon if you’ve ever seen one. And out in the open, as opposed to the images below. First up is a peekaboo moon behind the South Pole Telescope. You can even see a smattering of stars. Then there is a mostly hidden moon, backlighting the TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) antenna, first with the beacon on and then with the beacon off.

  • ICARUS: Neutrinos Travel At Light Speed. Period.

    Updated: 2012-08-14 18:06:12
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  • Newswire: BNL - Closing in on the Border Between Primordial Plasma and Ordinary Matter

    Updated: 2012-08-13 05:00:00
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  • Newswire: CERN - LHC experiments bring new insight into matter of the primordial Universe

    Updated: 2012-08-13 05:00:00
    Geneva, 13 August 2012. Experiments using heavy ions at CERN1's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are advancing understanding of the primordial Universe. The ALICE, ATLAS and CMS collaborations have made new measurements of the kind of matter that probably existed in the first instants of the Universe. They will present their latest results at the 2012 Quark Matter conference, which starts today in Washington DC. The new findings are based mainly on the four-week LHC run with lead ions in 2011, during which the experiments collected 20 times more data than in 2010.

  • MACHOs, WIMPs and the mystery of the missing mass - Comment by Elvandil

    Updated: 2012-08-11 17:38:09
    The one thing you forgot to mention, the most important thing as far as I'm concerned, is the possibility that dark matter does not exist at all. It could be nothing but a by-product of our means of detecting it. Remember that the only reason we have right now to believe that it exists at all is gravitational lensing. If gravity has some secrets we don't yet know, such as repulsion at long dist. . .

  • Week 31 at the Pole

    Updated: 2012-08-08 06:00:00
    Cold, windy, with the moon back up. We have two photos of balloon launches this week. Above we see a NOAA ozone balloon about to go up. Below is the daily weather balloon before its launch. Missing are images of “Super hero bingo night.” The fun never stops down there.

  • Newswire: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - The First Public Data Release from BOSS, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey

    Updated: 2012-08-08 05:00:00
    Led by Berkeley Lab scientists, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's BOSS is bigger than all other spectroscopic surveys combined for measuring the universe’s large-scale structure The Third Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-III) has issued Data Release 9 (DR9), the first public release of data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS). In this release BOSS, the largest of SDSS-III's four surveys, provides spectra for 535,995 newly observed galaxies, 102,100 quasars, and 116,474 stars, plus new information about objects in previous Sloan surveys (SDSS-I and II).

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