• Studying the migratory habits of sea turtles

    Updated: 2012-02-29 15:22:29
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar ITER solves problem with superconducting cables News Picks home Studying the migratory habits of sea turtles By Physics Today on February 29, 2012 10:22 AM No Comments No TrackBacks Science Because leatherback sea turtles are endangered , a group of researchers at Stanford University has started looking at their migratory patterns to try to determine ways to protect the aquatic reptiles . The group's results have been published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B Adult sea turtles lay their eggs on beaches along the eastern Pacific Ocean around Costa Rica . Once hatched , the babies make their way to the sea . As young turtles

  • ITER solves problem with superconducting cables

    Updated: 2012-02-28 19:27:21
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Netherlands group may have detected elusive quantum particle News Picks home ITER solves problem with superconducting cables By Physics Today on February 28, 2012 2:27 PM No Comments No TrackBacks Science A potential construction delay for ITER , the international fusion reactor , has been resolved . Tests run last year had determined that the superconducting cables , which generate the magnetic fields holding the superheated plasma in place at the heart of the machine , were lasting only one-tenth as long as needed . Three individual strands less than a millimeter across are wound together to form a triplet , and 288 triplets are

  • Scientists put detectors to the test, a few particles at a time

    Updated: 2012-02-28 17:00:08
    At the Fermilab Test Beam Facility, scientists from around the world line up to test new detector technologies that will help shape the future of particle physics. Whether experimenters need a few pions or lots of protons, the FTBF can deliver: It offers the only high-energy hadron test beam in the United States.

  • Netherlands group may have detected elusive quantum particle

    Updated: 2012-02-28 14:51:47
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Imaging charge distribution within a single molecule News Picks home Netherlands group may have detected elusive quantum particle By Physics Today on February 28, 2012 9:51 AM No Comments No TrackBacks Nature Researchers at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands may be the first to have detected the long-sought Majorana fermion which is a fermion that acts as its own antiparticle . Majorana fermions are not necessarily individual particles like electrons or protons . Quasiparticles collective excitations of groups of particles can also qualify as Majorana fermions . Leo Kouwenhoven presented the group's findings

  • Imaging charge distribution within a single molecule

    Updated: 2012-02-27 21:02:08
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Company develops cheaper , more powerful electric-car battery News Picks home Imaging charge distribution within a single molecule By Physics Today on February 27, 2012 4:02 PM No Comments No TrackBacks BBC A group of researchers at IBM Research Zurich used Kelvin probe force microcopy , a variant of atomic force microscopy , to capture the intricate dance of electrons in a complex molecule . They scanned a tiny bar with a charged tip across the surface of a much larger , X-shaped molecule , naphthalocyanine . When the charged tip reacted to charges within the naphthalocyanine , the researchers were able to determine the locations of

  • Do not trust womanizers

    Updated: 2012-02-27 19:33:00
    First google "Antonio Ereditato", spokesperson of the OPERA experiment at Gran Sasso, and watch some videos. Then continue reading here.The guy is a womanizer. Such men should never be taken seriously. Here is why: when people in his experiment found that the neutrinos are not faster than light, but that a faulty cable falsely gave this result, he wrote a press report in which he claimed that there was a second error that could revive the sensational finding. This is a lie, obviously just added to save face.Ereditato is a crook - like every womanizer is.

  • Company develops cheaper, more powerful electric-car battery

    Updated: 2012-02-27 16:27:37
    , Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Mild winter in US worries horticulturists News Picks home Imaging charge distribution within a single molecule Company develops cheaper , more powerful electric-car battery By Physics Today on February 27, 2012 11:27 AM No Comments No TrackBacks New York Times Envia Systems in California announced today that it had made a major advance regarding electric vehicles a more powerful and less expensive lithium-ion battery . At half the current cost , the new cells will have an energy density almost three times greater than conventional automotive cells . To develop such a battery , Envia was awarded 4 million in late 2009 by the US

  • Mild winter in US worries horticulturists

    Updated: 2012-02-27 15:17:22
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Moderate drought was downfall of the Maya News Picks home Company develops cheaper , more powerful electric-car battery Mild winter in US worries horticulturists By Physics Today on February 27, 2012 10:17 AM No Comments No TrackBacks New York Times From New York City to Washington , DC , to Chicago , plants and flowering bulbs are bursting out two to four weeks ahead of schedule , writes Lisa Foderaro for the New York Times Although many people in the US are enjoying an unusually early spring , a mild winter is not necessarily good for plants . Buds and blooms may be triggered too early and suffer if temperatures suddenly plunge .

  • Synopsis: Optical Device is More Than 100% Efficient

    Updated: 2012-02-27 15:00:00
    Experiments demonstrate a semiconductor device that emits more power as light than it takes in electrically. Published Mon Feb 27, 2012

  • Viewpoint: Precision Measurement with Cold Atoms

    Updated: 2012-02-27 15:00:00
    An improved mirror reduces the errors in an atom interferometer caused by Earth’s rotation and increases the time and spatial dimensions over which precision measurements can be made. Published Mon Feb 27, 2012

  • Webcast: Combining science disciplines for modern cancer treatment

    Updated: 2012-02-27 11:51:53
    A webcast of the public lecture “Treating cancer in the XXI century: biology, physics and genomics,” will be available at webcast.cern.ch today at 12:30 p.m. EST.

  • What the World Is Made Of | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2012-02-26 20:17:28
    I know you’re all following the Minute Physics videos (that we talked about here), but just in case my knowledge is somehow fallible you really should start following them. After taking care of why stones are round, and why there is no pink light, Henry Reich is now explaining the fundamental nature of our everyday [...]

  • Moderate drought was downfall of the Maya

    Updated: 2012-02-24 21:07:43
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar US Republican presidential candidates maintain climate change skepticism News Picks home Moderate drought was downfall of the Maya By Physics Today on February 24, 2012 4:07 PM No Comments No TrackBacks BBC From about AD 250 to 800, Mayan civilization , which thrived in what is now southern Mexico and Guatemala , developed a culturally sophisticated empire made up of several independent city-states . Between AD 800 and 900, however , large-scale architectural construction ceased and the civilization went into lengthy decline , although Mayan civilization overall continued until the Spanish conquered the last city-state , Tayasal , in

  • US Republican presidential candidates maintain climate change skepticism

    Updated: 2012-02-24 18:04:19
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Space travel can affect astronauts' sense of taste and smell News Picks home Moderate drought was downfall of the Maya US Republican presidential candidates maintain climate change skepticism By Physics Today on February 24, 2012 1:04 PM No Comments No TrackBacks InsideClimate News Despite the fact that 98 of climate scientists , some of them members of the US Republican Party , are convinced of human-induced global warming , none of the current Republican presidential candidates appears to support the scientific consensus . In fact , such support has been actively discouraged , most notably by the oil industry and powerful

  • Space travel can affect astronauts' sense of taste and smell

    Updated: 2012-02-24 16:58:18
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Ocean current spurred faster rotation of Earth News Picks home US Republican presidential candidates maintain climate change skepticism Space travel can affect astronauts' sense of taste and smell By Physics Today on February 24, 2012 11:58 AM No Comments No TrackBacks NPR After a few days in space , astronauts start craving spicier food , and researchers are looking into the reason why . Jean Hunter , a food engineer at Cornell University , says that space travel can cause humans to lose their sense of smell . That loss , says Michele Perchonok , the head of NASA's food science program , may be due to the weightless environment . On

  • Focus: Graphyne May Be Better than Graphene

    Updated: 2012-02-24 15:00:00
    Sheets of single-layer carbon with a variety of bonding patterns may have properties similar to the wonder material graphene, according to new computer simulations. Published Fri Feb 24, 2012

  • Ocean current spurred faster rotation of Earth

    Updated: 2012-02-23 20:41:20
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar CERN issues statement about OPERA neutrino result News Picks home Ocean current spurred faster rotation of Earth By Physics Today on February 23, 2012 3:41 PM No Comments No TrackBacks National Geographic For about two weeks in November 2009, Earth took 0.1 millisecond less to make one complete rotation on its axis . A study by Steven Marcus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California indicates that a slowdown in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current was strong enough to make the Earth slow its rotation to conserve angular momentum . Toward the end of 2009, the Southern Ocean also had record high surface temperatures and record high

  • World’s best measurement of W boson mass tests Standard Model, Higgs boson limits

    Updated: 2012-02-23 20:00:03
    Today, scientists from the CDF collaboration have unveiled the world's most precise measurement of the W boson mass, based on data gathered at the Tevatron accelerator. The precision of this measurement surpasses all previous measurements combined and restricts the space in which the Higgs particle should reside according to the Standard Model, the theoretical framework that describes all known subatomic particles and forces.

  • Faster-than-light neutrinos explained?

    Updated: 2012-02-23 18:54:39
    Albert Einstein's law of special relativity might shrug off the challenge of faster-than-light neutrinos after all. Scientists in the OPERA collaboration announced today that they have found two possible causes for the surprising results they presented in September 2011, in which neutrinos seemed to beat Einstein's cosmic speed limit.

  • Synopsis: Plastic Capacitors

    Updated: 2012-02-23 15:00:00
    Calculations show that combining polymers can improve their dielectic properties and reveal the atomic rearrangements that make this possible. Published Thu Feb 23, 2012

  • Synopsis: Graphene Nanoribbons Zip Up

    Updated: 2012-02-23 15:00:00
    Nanoscale planar materials such as graphene could be twisted to fabricate tubular objects. Published Thu Feb 23, 2012

  • Synopsis: Universal Pairing Symmetry

    Updated: 2012-02-23 15:00:00
    Specific heat measurements reveal a universal symmetry for the superconducting gap in a family of heavy fermion materials. Published Thu Feb 23, 2012

  • CERN issues statement about OPERA neutrino result

    Updated: 2012-02-23 00:42:31
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Bad wiring could be behind superluminal neutrino result News Picks home CERN issues statement about OPERA neutrino result By Physics Today on February 23, 2012 7:42 AM No Comments No TrackBacks CERN The press office of CERN issued the following statement today about last year's finding by the OPERA collaboration that neutrinos travel faster than the speed of : light The OPERA collaboration has informed its funding agencies and host laboratories that it has identified two possible effects that could have an influence on its neutrino timing measurement . These both require further tests with a short pulsed beam . If confirmed , one would

  • Bad wiring could be behind superluminal neutrino result

    Updated: 2012-02-22 22:01:26
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Nuclear power entrepreneurs advocate using thorium as a fuel News Picks home CERN issues statement about OPERA neutrino result Bad wiring could be behind superluminal neutrino result By Physics Today on February 22, 2012 5:01 PM No Comments No TrackBacks Science A bad connection between a GPS unit and a computer could be behind the OPERA collaboration's determination last year that neutrinos travel faster than light . Sources familiar with the experiment told Science s Edwin Cartlidge that they had discovered a loose connection between a computer and a fiber optic cable that connects to the GPS receiver used to correct the timing of

  • Nuclear power entrepreneurs advocate using thorium as a fuel

    Updated: 2012-02-22 21:40:43
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Squids use less energy for faster speed when flying News Picks home Bad wiring could be behind superluminal neutrino result Nuclear power entrepreneurs advocate using thorium as a fuel By Physics Today on February 22, 2012 4:40 PM No Comments No TrackBacks Washington Post Thorium , which exists in the ground as thorium oxide and is three to four times more plentiful worldwide as uranium , is getting another look as a potential nuclear fuel . It was used at an Oak Ridge Laboratory reactor from 1965 to 1969, but that program fell by the wayside when fears of proliferation cast a pall over experimental nuclear programs in the US .

  • No faster than light neutrinos after all…

    Updated: 2012-02-22 20:41:00
    Media all around the World are spreading the news. A defective apparatus at CERN caused so much ado. Back to Einstein again… Filed under: Media, News, Particle Physics, Physics Tagged: CERN, Neutrinos, OPERA

  • Squids use less energy for faster speed when flying

    Updated: 2012-02-22 19:44:46
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Hubble scientists detect new type of planet News Picks home Nuclear power entrepreneurs advocate using thorium as a fuel Squids use less energy for faster speed when flying By Physics Today on February 22, 2012 2:44 PM No Comments No TrackBacks Nature Many species of squid can propel themselves through the air by squirting water out of their mantles , just as they do to swim . Flying is not only faster for squid than swimming is it may also save them energy over long distances . Ronald O’Dor of Dalhousie University in Halifax , Canada and Julia Stewart of Stanford University in California studied a set of photos of orange-back squid

  • Hubble scientists detect new type of planet

    Updated: 2012-02-22 16:12:24
    Physics Today News Picks A blog of hand-picked science news from the staff of Physics Today Home Print edition Advertising Buyers Guide Jobs Events calendar Climate document leak leads to scientist's resignation News Picks home Squids use less energy for faster speed when flying Hubble scientists detect new type of planet By Physics Today on February 22, 2012 11:12 AM No Comments No TrackBacks MSNBC Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed a so-called super-Earth a mere 40 light-years away . GJ 1214b is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs nearly seven times as much . Most notable , however , is the fact that a huge fraction of its mass is made up of water . Because of its high temperatures and high pressures , GJ 1214b likely has a steamy atmosphere and an

  • How to See the Invisible: 3 Approaches to Finding Dark Matter | DISCOVER Magazine

    Updated: 2012-02-22 15:30:00
    :

  • String Theory Skeptics and Multiverse Mania

    Updated: 2012-02-21 22:08:12
    My endless rants here about the hot field of multiverse studies are mainly motivated by concern about the effect this is having on particle theory. Multiverse scenarios all too often function as an excuse for not admitting that string theory/extra-dimensional … Continue reading →

  • Editorial: Trends in Physics session

    Updated: 2012-02-21 15:00:00
    Join the Physics editors for the “Trends in Physics” session at the 2012 APS March meeting in Boston, Wednesday February 29th. Published Tue Feb 21, 2012

  • Viewpoint: The ABC of Aharonov Effects

    Updated: 2012-02-21 15:00:00
    Controlling the spin and geometric phase of electrons in a semiconductor ring. Published Tue Feb 21, 2012

  • Analyzing New Data: Never the Same Twice

    Updated: 2012-02-20 16:19:11
    Physicists did a lot of planning for data analysis before the LHC ever ran, and we’ve put together a huge number of analyses since it started. We’ve already looked for most of the things we’ll ever look for. Of course, many of the things we’ve been looked for haven’t shown up yet; in fact, in [...]

  • Stars containing dark matter should look different from other stars

    Updated: 2012-02-20 15:40:01
    (PhysOrg.com) -- Finding evidence for dark matter – the unknown substance that theoretically makes up 23% of the universe – has been one of the biggest challenges in modern cosmology. Several experiments are underway to detect dark matter candidates known as Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) as they travel through the Earth. And experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are trying to produce WIMPs through proton beam collisions. Now in a new study, scientists have shown that feebly annihilating dark matter particles captured inside a star can provide an additional source of energy to the star, resulting in changes to its structure and appearance. Observing these stars could potentially offer scientists a tool to detect and analyze this kind of dark matter.

  • Chamonix 2012

    Updated: 2012-02-19 17:35:29
    At the start of each calendar year, the CERN management holds a workshop in Chamonix to discuss the LHC run plan for the coming year and beyond. This year’s meeting was held two weeks ago, and this past week CERN announced the outcomes. Now, after last year’s Chamonix, the plan came out differently than many [...]

  • Tevatron might be shutdown…but still has something interesting to say

    Updated: 2012-02-18 23:16:24
    As discussed in this blog post in Scientific American (see blog post here) the Tevatron experiments may have a few last interesting things to say when it comes to the Higgs Boson at the March meetings. At the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) spokes person Rob Roser [...]

  • Why the laws of nature cannot evolve

    Updated: 2012-02-16 20:59:00
    Smolin and several other particle physicists believe that the laws of nature evolve.They don't. Experiment shows that Newton's law, Coulomb's law, or the conservation of energy and momentum are valid all the time and everywhere. Nature's laws cannot evolve. Laws are by definition that part of nature that stays the same."Evolutions of laws" is doublespeak. Let us put Smolin and his companions where they belong: into oblivion.

  • February 2012 issue of symmetry available

    Updated: 2012-02-16 19:09:44
    Our February issue runs the gamut from the proud 30-year-legacy of the Tevatron Collider to the latest popular physics sensation: faster-than-light neutrinos.

  • Synopsis: Double, Double…Bubble

    Updated: 2012-02-16 15:00:00
    ,

  • Synopsis: Fermionic Switch

    Updated: 2012-02-16 15:00:00
    Interacting atoms mimic the behavior of identical fermions. Published Thu Feb 16, 2012

  • Synopsis: Going the Distance

    Updated: 2012-02-16 15:00:00
    Researchers have measured the distance over which electrons generate photons with a simple mechanical technique, allowing better understanding of how the photons are produced. Published Thu Feb 16, 2012

  • Synopsis: Nanoparticle Sifting

    Updated: 2012-02-16 15:00:00
    Nanopatterned surfaces could, according to calculations, provide a way to sort tiny particles by size. Published Thu Feb 16, 2012

  • Releasing LHCb results

    Updated: 2012-02-16 09:28:52
    Winter conference season [*] is upon us, which means everybody is busy preparing new results. Today, instead of talking about the physics itself, I’m going to discuss the process around it; namely the procedure which the results of an LHCb analysis [**] need to go through before being released. There are two ways in which [...]

  • Brookhaven Scientists Help Develop Model for Future Accelerators

    Updated: 2012-02-15 16:06:39
    Working with an international team, three physicists from Brookhaven Lab have helped to demonstrate the feasibility of a new kind of particle accelerator that may be used in future physics research, medical applications, and power-generating reactors. The team reported the first successful acceleration of particles in a small-scale model of the accelerator in a paper [...]

  • Pauli’s Exclusion Principal: a classical interpretation

    Updated: 2012-02-15 11:58:47
    Tweet Pauli’s Exclusion Principle We have shown throughout the Imagineer’s Chronicles and its companion book "The Reality of the Fourth *Spatial* Dimension" there would many theoretical advantages to defining the universe in terms of four *spatial* dimensions instead of four dimensional space-time. One is that it would allow for the derivation of Pauli’s exclusion principle [...]

  • The hidden face of CERN

    Updated: 2012-02-15 10:20:09
    Most people associate CERN with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). But lesser known although extremely diversified research activities are also ongoing at CERN. About a thousand physicists are working on experiments ranging from antimatter studies to cancer therapy, cloud formation and radioisotope production. Already in 2011, the ALPHA experiment made the headlines when they managed [...]

  • SUSY Still in Hiding

    Updated: 2012-02-14 16:52:09
    Recent rumors supposedly coming from theorists at Harvard indicating that today would be the day that an announcement would be made of first evidence for a superpartner of a top quark have just been shot down. The talk at CERN … Continue reading →

  • Why do we expect a Higgs boson? Part II: Unitarization of Vector Boson Scattering

    Updated: 2012-02-14 16:23:31
    Hi everyone—it’s time that I wrap up some old posts about the Higgs boson. Last December’s tantalizing results may end up being the first signals of the real deal and the physics community is eagerly awaiting the combined results to be announce at the Rencontres de Moriond conference next month. So now would be a great [...]

  • My entangled heart

    Updated: 2012-02-14 13:51:37
    Readers who submitted to our "My Physical Romance” readers' challenge found love through physics and, sometimes, physics through love. But in all scenarios, they show the passion that physics can inspire.

  • Tomorrow: Live underground tour of the CMS detector on Google+

    Updated: 2012-02-14 10:16:32
    You're invited to tour an underground cavern that holds one of the largest scientific experiments in the world. Tomorrow, Feb. 15, the head of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, physicist Joe Incandela, will chat live from the CMS detector 100 meters underground in France via a Google+ Hangout.

  • CERN plans for even more intense year of LHC physics

    Updated: 2012-02-13 15:40:11
    CERN scientists will begin running the Large Hadron Collider at a higher energy than ever before when this winter’s technical stop comes to a close in mid-March, the laboratory announced in a press release today.

  • Synopsis: Ponytail physics

    Updated: 2012-02-13 15:00:00
    A new theoretical model of hair explains how the curliness and elasticity of hair fibers produce the characteristic shape of a ponytail. Published Mon Feb 13, 2012

  • Viewpoint: Silicon Nanowires Feel the Force of Magnetic Resonance

    Updated: 2012-02-13 15:00:00
    Silicon nanowire sensors offer a route to improving the sensitivity and spatial resolution of magnetic resonance force microscopy. Published Mon Feb 13, 2012

  • Viewpoint: Are Mammals Ferroelectric?

    Updated: 2012-02-13 15:00:00
    The discovery of ferroelecticity in mammalian tissue makes researchers wonder what its purpose is and what it may be useful for. Published Mon Feb 13, 2012

  • Dust is finally settling…

    Updated: 2012-02-10 17:11:25
    The situation about Yang-Mills theory is finally settling down. I do not mean that mathematicians’ community has finally decided the winner of the Millenium prize but rather that people working on the study of two-point functions on a pure Yang-Mills theory have finally a complete scenario for it. These studies have seen very hot debates [...]

  • CERN hosts Swiss semi-finals for international science communication competition

    Updated: 2012-02-09 15:00:06
    CERN hosted the Swiss semi-finals for FameLab science communication competition on Feb. 4. Of the 21 researchers and students who braved the frigid weather to take a turn sharing their knowledge on stage, five will advance to the national finals in Zurich at the end of March.

  • Synopsis: Birth Rhythms

    Updated: 2012-02-09 15:00:00
    A model explains why, during pregnancy, contractions in the uterus exhibit collective behavior. Published Thu Feb 09, 2012

  • How To Think About Quantum Field Theory | Cosmic Variance

    Updated: 2012-02-07 23:15:52
    I continue to believe that “quantum field theory” is a concept that we physicists don’t do nearly enough to explain to a wider audience. And I’m not going to do it here! But I will link to other people thinking about how to think about quantum field theory. Over on the Google+, I linked to [...]

  • Latest from the LHC

    Updated: 2012-02-07 15:15:35
    CMS and ATLAS have just released final versions of their Higgs analyses for the 2011 data (the new CMS gamma-gamma analysis was previously discussed here). The preliminary versions of these were what was released last December, and the final versions … Continue reading →

  • Synopsis: Tidal Disruption of a Star

    Updated: 2012-02-07 15:00:00
    Theorists suggest that the weeks-long flare measured last year from a distant galaxy was probably beamed by a jet of material aligned with the rotational axis of a mammoth black hole. Published Tue Feb 07, 2012

  • Reader challenge: My physical romance

    Updated: 2012-02-07 11:00:12
    Before next week’s holiday, we at Symmetry Breaking want to know about your affair with physics. Send us a love letter (or “Dear John” letter) about your research, a playful pun about a physical concept, or a story about a connection you’ve made with a fellow scientist. Post your comments here or send them to scharley@fnal.gov. We will publish our favorites on Feb. 14.

  • Viewpoint: Pairing with Spin Fluctuations

    Updated: 2012-02-06 15:00:00
    Ferromagnetic fluctuations drive superconductivity in UCoGe. Published Mon Feb 06, 2012

  • Viewpoint: Multiferroic Propellers

    Updated: 2012-02-06 15:00:00
    Helicoidal magnetic order induces a record high electrical polarization. Published Mon Feb 06, 2012

  • Hep-th is doing badly - no honest theorist in sight

    Updated: 2012-02-06 05:40:00
    : Physics Without Ideology Bite by Bite The search for a theory of everything : satire about bad candidates and gentle fun about good candidates , such as the strand-spaghetti . model 6 February 2012 Hep-th is doing badly no honest theorist in sight Reading the hep-th summaries is really interesting . There is almost nothing on string theory since many months . There is little about supersymmetry since many months . There are no new proposals for unified theories any . more The LHC will provide data at the end of 2012. And obviously particle theoreticians have no courage to propose something that can be checked soon . The whole community is doing nothing Almost nobody has the courage to predict : This is what will be measured When Einstein found general relativity , he wrote : This is what

  • Numerical evidence for the square root of a Wiener process

    Updated: 2012-02-02 15:35:06
    Brownian motion is a very kind mathematical object being very keen to numerical simulations. There are a plenty of them for any platform and software so that one is able to check very rapidly the proper working of a given hypothesis. For these aims, I have found very helpful the demonstration site by Wolfram and [...]

  • The Langlands Program and Quantum Field Theory

    Updated: 2012-02-02 01:59:53
    Edward Frenkel is here this semester in the math department at Columbia, and he’s giving a series of lectures on a topic dear to my heart. Video of his lectures on The Langlands Program and Quantum Field Theory is starting … Continue reading →

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