The last two days of the Aspen winter conference on “Paving the Way to New Discoveries in Particle Physics” ended with some pretty interesting stuff. From questions about sources of ultra-high-energy neutrinos to implications for the Standard Model from quantum information theory, this conference did not disappoint.
The end of the second, and all of the third, days of the “Paving the Way to New Discoveries in Particle Physics” conference saw a focus on the strong interaction, machine learning, and deeper dives into fundamental mathematical questions. Also, I finished writing my talk. 🙂
Sunday afternoon was spent exploring more of Aspen on foot, including a nearby park and walking trails. The conference kicked off that night with a reception, followed by the start of the program on Monday morning. Here are some highlights from the first two days.
Walking is my preferred mode of exploration, so yesterday I spent a bunch of time walking the area around downtown Aspen. The weather was lovely (hovering around or above 0C!), so it was a joy to be outside again. I also took the chance to find the Aspen Center for […]
I don’t ski. I don’t want to ski. So why am I in Aspen, Colorado for the next week? I am here because Aspen is home to one of the great centers for physics.
Several years ago, I was invited by a colleague of mine to join in an effort to teach a brief summer course entitled “The Secret City”. The few-day course, taught at a satellite university campus in New Mexico, explored the story of the Manhattan Project and its aftermath. It was […]
A poem for #DarkMatterDay, inspired by both the mystery and the #MastoPrompt effort on open social federated media. Have everything/Be everything It would have everything.It would be everything.It would sing its own praises,Raise its voice to the heavens:“I am all that is. I have all that is.” Dark Matter eyed […]
I am again live blogging impressions and reactions to the Nobel Prize in Physics. Live entries are below. The liveblog has ended.No liveblog updates yet. Load more
Updated Nov. 1, 2025 with WordPress information. The “fediverse” is the term for the federated social web, a collection of social media concepts (Mastodon, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Friendica, Bookwyrm, etc.) that can all talk to each other by virtue of a common protocol: ActivityPub. The technical details don’t matter. What matters […]
We are headed into the season of the Nobel Prize. Announcements of awards will begin on October 6, with the Physics Prize being announced on the 7th. This year, I decided to have some fun in the “fediverse” and try to tease some nuggets out of the wisdom of the […]
Will a 2019 Intel-based iMac (without the T2 security chip) happily run GNU/Linux? This was the question I set out to answer when we recently retired the first Mac we ever bought for our house. The answer is YES. But the details matter. Background: Forced Obsolescence of Good Hardware For-profit […]
This answer is for Alan. After my keynote talk at the Hartness House Workshop last night, he approached me with a really interesting question. What is the total mass of the neutrinos emitted by a core-collapse supernova (CCSN)? This is a great question and a chance to do some estimating […]