Blog Profile / Symmetry Breaking
| URL : | http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Academics / Physics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 952 | |
| Posts / Week: | 4.1 | |
| Archived Since: | December 20, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
A banner day at the LHC
An artist honors the people and science of the CMS collaboration. There’s a new splash of color at Point Five, the home of CMS detector on the Large Hadron Collider. Five vivid banners drape the gray walls of the complex, lending the warehouse a cathedral-like atmosphere. Show More Summary
Moniz confirmed as Energy Secretary
The US Senate has unanimously confirmed MIT physics professor Ernest Moniz as the next Secretary of Energy. Ernest Moniz, an MIT physics professor with extensive experience with particle accelerators and national energy policies, has...Show More Summary
Cherries in the bean cake
What’s the difference between circular and linear particle colliders like the Large Hadron Collider and the proposed International Linear Collider? Symmetry takes a trip into the kitchen pantry to find out. Already celebrated for bringing the world news of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider is only beginning its long journey of discoveries. Show More Summary
The top 40 physics hits of 2012
The Higgs boson is a popular subject among the most-cited physics papers of 2012, but a particle simulation manual takes the top spot. Think of it as a particle physics version of pop radio's “top 40” countdown: INSPIRE, a database of...Show More Summary
Symmetry challenge: Neutrino oscillation analogy
Symmetry is on the hunt for the best analogy to describe neutrino oscillation, the process by which a neutrino changes from one flavor to the next. This summer the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States, the NOvA detector, will start catching neutrinos hurled from Fermilab, 500 miles away. Show More Summary
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Muon g-2 experiment kicks off this summer with the move of a 50-foot-wide ring-shaped cryostat from New York to Illinois. It’s not often that big science comes rolling right through your town. For those who live between Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, that’s about to happen. Show More Summary
Smallest lab-made drop of liquid might cause strange particle behavior
A new result from the CMS collaboration takes a step toward revealing the origin of the mysterious ‘ridge effect.’ The Large Hadron Collider is known for a list of impressive facts—it’s the world’s largest and most powerful particleShow More Summary
A knack for exploring
With a solid grounding in physics, Thomas Humphrey shares the fun of discovery at San Francisco’s Exploratorium. In 1973, graduate student Thomas Humphrey considered becoming an accelerator physicist because he liked working with small...Show More Summary
Dark-matter detector hears first particle pops
The COUPP-60 dark-matter experiment has begun recording the trails of bubbles that passing particles form in its detector. Pop pop pop! The sound of bubbles bursting Wednesday morning signaled that a new dark-matter detector is up and...Show More Summary
Free from the start
Since CERN released the World Wide Web without royalties 20 years ago today, the technology has flourished. Twenty years ago today, the web was set free. In a statement published by the particle physics laboratory CERN on April 30, 1993,...Show More Summary
Matter, antimatter, we all fall down—right?
Scientists perform the first direct investigation into how antimatter interacts with gravity. What goes up must come down, the saying goes. But things might work a little differently with antimatter. A CERN-based experiment has taken...Show More Summary
Dark Energy Survey launches new photo blog
Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have started posting weekly photos taken by and of the world’s most powerful digital camera. What would it be like to peer billions of years into the past, viewing hundreds of millions of galaxies, some billions of light years away? What would it feel like to be part of a team trying to uncover the secrets of our universe?
SLAC's historic 'End Station A' hosts electron beams again
A new facility opens for experiments this week in SLAC's historic End Station A, where the first evidence for quarks was discovered. Electrons are once again streaming into SLAC’s End Station A, setting the stage for a new facility in...Show More Summary
Strange beauty particle decays boost matter
Physicists from the LHCb collaboration have observed CP violation in the decay of a particle made of beauty and strange quarks. When the universe was less than a minute old, a tiny difference in the behavior of matter and antimatterShow More Summary
Icy experiment catches record-energy neutrinos
The IceCube experiment has made what could be an important step toward using neutrinos to find the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. Scientists on a South-Pole-based neutrino experiment reported today that they have detected the...Show More Summary
Plasma acceleration
Like surfers on huge ocean waves, electrons can ride waves of plasma to very high energies. Plasma acceleration could be the wave of the future. It is a way to accelerate particles more efficiently than current techniques that use radiofrequency...Show More Summary
Q&A with Fabiola Gianotti, Higgs hunter
Symmetry sits down with Fabiola Gianotti, who recently finished an eventful four years as spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Physicist Fabiola Gianotti, one of the two experiment leaders who announced...Show More Summary
Winning Photowalk images show modern beauty of science
Judges have announced the winners of the 2012 Global Particle Physics Photowalk. A stark black-and-white photo of an access tunnel 1500 meters underground and a colorful close-up of a detector that wouldn’t be out of place in a building...Show More Summary
Naturalness
When a scientific result fails the test of “naturalness,” it can point to new physics. Suppose a team of auditors is tasked with understanding a particular billionaire’s bank account. Each month, millions of dollars flow into and out of the account. Show More Summary
LHC passes ‘ping-pong ball’ test
Physicists sent an ultra-clean, miniature ping-pong ball through part of the Large Hadron Collider beam pipe to test for hidden defects. Sometimes the best solutions in high-energy physics research are surprisingly low-tech. Physicists...Show More Summary