Probably no signs of gravitational waves, signs of dark matter but not a discovery. That is the word from this first day of the American Physical Society's meeting in Denver Colorado. 

 In the plenary keynote session of the meeting today, I asked a question of Lloyd Knox of the PLANCK collaboration. My question regarded the B mode polarization data and what it may show. He said that this data would be officially released next year. He also expressed the professional opinion that the data may not show a strong gravitational wave signal. This would be significant since the simplest models of inflation predict a strong gravitational wave signal. Dr. Knox went as far as to state “the simplest models are probably ruled out” (not quite verbatim.)

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer has found is that there are interesting features in the cosmic ray background which could indicate dark matter particle anti particle annihilations.  That is not the same as finding dark matter.   The ANTARES neutrino telescope was used to take observations of the solar neutrino flux with directionality, which found no excess of neutrinos from the sun  (http://arxiv.org/abs/1302.6516).  That would have indicated dark matter concentrated at the center of mass of our solar system.   Taken together these results indicate that many of our assumptions on the nature of dark matter are wrong.

A ground breaking paper has been published in the journal of comparative irrelevance which shows the Lambda CDM model is wrong.  It's all in the numbers..
This theory explains everything better than LCDM.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.7476

From the perspective of one theoretical particle physicist Planck found far from "nothing". The ESA's Planck probe largely corroborates the findings of NASA's WMAP probe, but it leaves theoretical astrophysics unsettled. After reading my fellow blogger Dr. Tommaso Dorigo's coverage of the Planck announcement I was unsure how to react. We can only conclude that the Planck mission has largely confirmed WMAP's results. Just this kind of confirmation is a basic step in the scientific method.

The technical details of Big Bang, inflationary cosmology, and selected alternative theories are on offer.  Popular accounts of the big bang theory, cosmic inflation, and the creation of the universe often leave out details a consumer of science would like to know.  Scholarly monographs published the old fashioned way can cost hundreds of dollars per copy, and too often are locked away in university libraries.  For general public availability, I present my monograph on the cosmology of the early universe.

With the Surface Pro Microsoft has made a statement on what a PC should be for the next five to ten years.   Rather than fading away the PC will become thin, lite, and easy to use while retaining the flexibility that has always been the hallmark of the personal computer.   That said, Surface Pro is not perfect for all uses.  These are my impressions after spending a week with the Microsoft Surface Pro 64 GB.