China unveils ambitious space-exploration plan
Updated: 2011-12-30 22:56:00
New York Times: The Chinese government has announced a five-year space-exploration plan that calls for launching a space laboratory and collecting samples from the Moon, all by 2016, along with a powerful manned spaceship and space freighters. The plan includes a major expansion of the Beidou Navigation Satellite System, which on Tuesday began providing navigation, positioning, and timing data on China and surrounding areas. China intends to expand Beidou from its current 10 satellites to 35 satellites in orbit by 2020.
Which string theorist can honestly say that string theory is correct? Or that supersymmetry is correct?Most universities require from their students "honesty in the search for truth". But universities are tricky beasts: they rarely apply to themselves what they require from others. If they did, university researchers and professors working on string theory would need to resign. Why don't they? Because of the money. These researchers do not pursue truth. They pursue money.
Christmas time brings not only presents and pretty cookies but an outpouring of media lists proffering the best science stories of the year and predicting those that will top the list in 2012. While the lists varied wildly everyone seemed excited by a few of the same things: upsetting Einstein’s theory of special relativity, a [...]
– By Theorist David Morrissey & Particle Physicist Anadi Canepa Last week we hosted two particle physics workshops at TRIUMF – an ATLAS Canada collaboration meeting and a joint meeting for theorists and experimentalists to study new LHC results. Everything went smoothly, no participants were lost to the wilds of Vancouver, and we had some [...]
As symmetry breaking closes down for its long winter's nap, please enjoy (or at least put up with) a badly adapted holiday song and the chance to reflect on a fascinating year in particle physics.
Amid all the hype and excitement of the new physics being announced from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in 2011, there was another, little known, cause for celebration: the anniversary of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG).
Amir D. Aczel has been closely associated with CERN and particle physics for a number of years and often consults on statistical issues relating to physics. He is also the author of 18 popular books on mathematics and science. By now you’ve heard the news-non-news about the Higgs: there are hints of a Higgs—even “strong [...]
Now that we might (maybe, possibly, could be, it could go away, let’s be careful about what we say here lest we put a jinx on it…) be seeing hints of a Higgs, it’s time of some cautionary tales that a ‘discovery’ is not the end of the story, it’s only the beginning. When I [...]
A four-ton digital camera landed safely in Chile this month on its way to making history by enabling the world’s largest galaxy survey, starting next year. Getting the camera there was a worldwide feat of technology and transportation prowess.
Qu’est-ce qui peut pousser les Parisiens à patienter dans le froid un samedi 17 décembre, plutôt que de courir les magasins de Noël ? Simplement la crainte qu’il n’y ait pas assez de place pour assister à la toute première conférence de l’Américain Saul Perlmutter, après avoir reçu son Nobel de physique à Stockholm. En [...]
Today’s high-end experiments are pushing scientists to invent new technologies to meet the demands of the next generation of physics. These innovations, however, must be balanced with creative cost-saving strategies. One expense currently under evaluation is the construction of liquid argon tanks, which play a vital role in sensitive neutrino experiments.
A new accelerator research facility being built at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will bolster Illinois’ reputation as a technology hub and foster job creation. 
Construction of a 12,000-square-foot research campus a mile underground is nearing completion in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and scientists will begin to move the first physics experiments underground this spring.
-- Bill Harlan
Le séminaire spécial sur les derniers résultats dans la quête pour le boson de Higgs tenu hier au CERN fut sûrement la présentation la plus excitante de ma carrière. L’ambiance était électrique et l’auditorium était déjà plein à craquer plus de deux heures avant l’heure prévue. Les membres de chaque collaboration, ATLAS et CMS, connaissaient [...]
The special CERN seminar on recent Higgs boson results held yesterday was one of the most exciting presentations I ever attended. The ambiance was electricifying and the room was packed more than two hours before it even started. Members of each collaboration working on this, namely CMS and ATLAS, both knew their half of the [...]
Medical physics is getting heavier. Shooting intense beams of protons into tumors to destroy them while leaving nearby tissues largely unharmed has been in vogue since the ’60s. Globally, however, many centers offering such beam-based cancer treatment, known as hadron therapy, are looking to more massive carbon ions for their unique therapeutic promise. These particles [...]
Finally, after some frantic waiting filled with rumors, we heard the truth from people at CERN. And we discovered that rumors were just right. Evidence is mounting for a Higgs particle at around 120-130 GeV, after new data were accounted for. All these evidences point toward a Standard Model Higgs. But some caution words are [...]
Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell, scientists announced in a seminar held at CERN today. However, the ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle.
: : Log in Email Password Remember me Your login is case sensitive I have forgotten my password Register now Activate my subscription Institutional login Athens login close My New Scientist Home News In-Depth Articles Blogs Opinion TV Galleries Topic Guides Last Word Subscribe Dating new Look for Science Jobs SPACE TECH ENVIRONMENT HEALTH LIFE PHYSICS MATH SCIENCE IN SOCIETY Live blog : Higgs hunt results from CERN 12:50 13 December 2011 Live Physics Math Maggie McKee , physical sciences news editor Image : Maximilien Brice CERN Physics lovers the world over are on the edge of their seats waiting to find out whether the Large Hadron Collider LHC has found any hints of the Higgs boson the particle that is thought to give all other particles . mass Today teams from both of the LHC's main
Tomorrow, Tuesday 13 December, there will be a couple of seminars at CERN presented by Fabiola Gianotti and Guido Tonelli, speaking respectively for the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the LHC. They will be updating us on the current status of the search for the Higgs boson. The seminars will be webcast from CERN, and [...]
Underground and closed off from visitors, experiments in particle physics often hide, rather than flaunt, the exotic and intricate machines that seem more at home in a science fiction blockbuster. No space shuttles, rockets or rovers wow visitors at today’s physics laboratories. The tried and true conduit from the underground to the outside world remains in most part the camera.
Last summer David Cassidy, a scientist at the University of California, Riverside, was busy using silicon to study positronium formation when his team noticed that the positronium, sitting on the silicon surface, didn't behave as it should have.
Perhaps you’ve heard of the Higgs boson. Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “desperately seeking” in this context. We need it, but so far we can’t find it. This all might change soon — there are seminars scheduled at CERN by both of the big LHC collaborations, to update us on their progress in looking for [...]