Physics

I remember a funny shirt I once saw at a physics conference- it gave 10 tips on what to do when "everything else fails". Here is the list: 10. Subtract Infinity 9. Add heavy fermions 8. Set all fermion masses to zero 7. Invent another symmetry 6. ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 3 2014 - 4:57am

Run, Alpha Strong, Run

One of the funniest misnomers in particle physics is the naming of coupling strength parameters of the fundamental interactions as "constants". We speak of a fine structure constant (alpha) to address one of the most important parameters of elect ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 6 2014 - 6:43pm

Black Holes May Be Cooler Than We Thought.

Stephen Hawking and Jacob Bekenstein made black holes hot, my latest work shows just how cool they really are. I have derived a formula for the temperature of a black hole which has the same basic shape as that derived by Bekenstein and Hawking, but whic ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Dec 12 2014 - 5:47pm

The Plot Of The Week: Higgs Decays To WW In ATLAS

The latest paper by the ATLAS Collaboration is a very detailed report of the search for Higgs boson decays to W boson pairs in Run 1 data. The H->WW* process contributes significantly to the total bounty of Higgs boson candidates that the two CERN exper ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 13 2014 - 10:07am

New Limits On VY Production From CDF: Good, But Also Disappointing

Alas, for once I must say I am not completely happy of one new result by the CDF collaboration- the experiment to which I devoted 18 years of my research time, and where I learned almost everything I know about experimental particle physics. ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 17 2014 - 1:41pm

Wave-Particle Duality And Quantum Uncertainty- Two Sides Of The Same Mystery?

If you think of quantum physics in terms of information about a system, it is a lot less complicated, according to a new paper. In that context, features of the quantum world previously considered distinct - wave-particle duality and the quantum uncerta ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 22 2014 - 11:15am

Guest Post: Ben Allanach, On Open Access

Ben Allanach, guest blogger, is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. He is grumpy about the way that public funds are being unnecessarily directed to scientific publishing houses. So I am offering this space to him to hear wh ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 19 2014 - 8:37am

Falsifiability And The Integrity Of Physics

Science is what scientist do. And the scientific method is the method scientists follow. A tautology you say? Not according to George Ellis and Joe Silk. In an opinion paper in Nature under the title ' Scientific method: Defend the integrity of physic ...

Article - Johannes Koelman - Feb 23 2015 - 10:27am

The Guard Dog. Who Keeps Watch for Fraudulent and Predatory Open Access Journals?

T h e advent of open access (OA) publishing has lead to a proliferation of journals which offer a peer reviewed publication venue for a nominal charge. Some of these journals are associated with scholarly associations. Such as Physical Review X. Others ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Dec 23 2014 - 2:16pm

Computing And Uncertainty: Quantum Leaps And Bounds In 2014

Let's take a look back through the past 12 months of quantum physics research. sharyn morrow/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND By Felix Pollock and Kavan Modi of Monash University. The past year has provided some of the most interesting developments in quantum mec ...

Article - The Conversation - Dec 28 2014 - 5:28pm