What makes us human? What distinguishes us from chimpanzees and other great apes? Using high-powered cluster computing and data from the human and chimp genome projects, Katie Pollard, an associate professor of biostatistics at the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, has discovered some surprising answers, as she explains in this interview.
Faster-than-light neutrinos? Why nobody is surprised it might be an error.
Last year, European particle physicists observed neutrinos apparently traveling faster than the speed of light. But now it seems that it was a bad measurement, which is no surprise to the physics community. ……..
‘They’ll find the God particle by summer.’ And Peter Higgs should knowRenowned physicist Professor Peter Higgs gives a rare interview to Jenny Fyall as he receives the Edinburgh AwardProfessor Peter Higgs told The Scotsman he thought scientists at Cern working with the Large Hadron Collider would find evidence that the elusive particle exists within a matter of months.The acclaimed 82-year-old theoretical physicist came up with the now famous theory in 1964 which provides an explanation for the origins of mass as a property of matter.………………………………………………………..
LHC reports discovery of its first new particle (BBC Report. Dec. 22, 2011)
It is called Chi_b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together. ………
The Chi_b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.
“The new particle is made up of a ‘beauty quark’ and a ‘beauty anti-quark’, which are then bound together,”
The ‘GOD’ Particle within the reach of LHC Scientists
ScienceDaily (Aug. 15, 2011) — The physics world was abuzz with some tantalizing news a couple of weeks ago. At a meeting of the European Physical Society in Grenoble, France, physicists — including some from Caltech — announced that the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might hint at the existence of the ever-elusive Higgs boson. ……..
In a paper published today in the journal Nature, the Japanese-European ASACUSA experiment at CERN1 reported a new measurement of the antiproton’s mass accurate to about one part in a billion. Precision measurements of the antiproton mass provide an important way to investigate nature’s apparent preference for matter over antimatter. ….
…….Any difference between the mass of protons and antiprotons would be a signal for new physics, indicating that the laws of nature could be different for matter and antimatter. ……
” A custom-built, $2.5 million “split magnet” system with the potential to revolutionize scientific research in a variety of fields has made its debut at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University.”
” … The world-record magnet is operating at 25 tesla, easily besting the 17.5 tesla French record set in 1991 for this type of magnet. ………….. In addition to being 43 percent more powerful than the previous world best, the new magnet also has 1,500 times as much space at its center, allowing room for more flexible, varied experiments.
To offer some perspective on the strength of the new magnet, consider this: Twenty-five tesla is equal to a whopping 500,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. Imagine that much power focused on a very small space and you have some idea what the split magnet is capable of — and why both engineers and scientists at the magnet lab are so excited. ……. ”
Large Hadron Collider rumoured to have found God Particle
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider are rumoured to have found the elusive so-called “God Particle”.
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent of The Telegraph. 8:10AM BST 24 Apr 2011
A leaked internal memo contains unconfirmed reports that one of the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, had picked up signals that could be the long sought after particle, called the Higgs boson.
One of the main scientific goals of the huge £6 billion atom smasher was to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give everything in the universe mass.
The particle is a key part of the standard model used in physics to describe how particles and atoms are made up.
Rumours that scientists working on the LHC had found evidence of the Higgs boson began to circulate after an supposed internal memo was posted on the internet.
But physicists were quick to urge caution over the claims as many candidates for the particle that appear in collision experiments at the LHC are subsequently dismissed on further examination.
by James Lloyd, Cosmos Online, Tuesday, 29 March 2011 SHROPSHIRE: Using data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment, a team of scientists has observed new behaviour of an exotic ‘B meson’ particle. The discovery of this new particle decay mode could help to shed light on one of the most puzzling unknowns in physics. When the universe was formed from the Big Bang 14 billion years ago, matter and antimatter were created in equal quantities. Today, however, we find ourselves in a universe composed almost entirely of matter. The apparent disappearance of antimatter could be explained if scientists discover differences in the way matter and antimatter decay.