Just... WOW. I did not expect this to happen in my lifetime (and no, I do not expect to die tomorrow either). The Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile has pictured a forming planetary system in a young star surrounded by a complex nebula of hot gas.I still remember the Scientific American article I read some 25 years ago about planet formation simulations, which showed how computer models of planetesimals rotating in a cloud of gas around a star. The planetesimals would pick up matter around as they swept the orbital plane, and in the matter of millions of years acquire a planetary mass and "clean up" the area around. Now we are seeing this before us, in the picture below offered by ALMA.

Just a short entry to mention that the blog of my colleague Michael Schmitt, a professor at Northwestern University and a member of the CMS collaboration, is as active as ever, with several very interesting and well-written pieces recently published:

"Two recent results from other experiments add to the excitement of Run II. The results from Brookhaven's g-minus-two experiments with muons have a straightforward interpretation as signs of supersymmetry. The increasingly interesting results from BABAR at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center add to the importance of B physics in Run II, and also suggest new physics. I will be shocked and disappointed if we don't have at least one major discovery."