As rumor had foretold, the DAMA/LIBRA collaboration released the results of their search for signal modulation in the annual cycle of the earth going around the sun. Both the old DAMA, and the new DAMA/LIBRA datasets are separately convincing that they are observing an annual modulation. Taken together, the datasets […]
Physics
260 posts
As I mentioned earlier today, the rumor is that in the next day the LIBRA experiment will release its first follow-on results to the DAMA experiment. Why is this such news? Let’s review. In 2000, the DAMA experiment published an observation of an annual modulation signal which they interpreted as […]
I stood in the back row of the textbook floor in the Yale Co-op. My summer job as a janitor had given me about $2000 to spend for the two semesters, including book expenses. I had all my class books, but that didn’t matter. The dark beauty standing in front […]
Rumor has it that the LIBRA experiment, the follow-on to the DAMA experiment, will release results later this week. For those of you not in the know, the DAMA experiment is the only experiment to date to claim a direct observation of a dark matter signature. Models of dark matter […]
In my previous musings on this topic, I noted that recently we in the HEP community had been suggested to come up with a concrete theory of spin-offs. This theory communicates the importance of funding basic research in HEP by selling the inevitability of beneficial spin-offs. I criticized the notion […]
Tonight is very likely my last shift on the BaBar experiment. I just got the baton from the penultimate liaison shifter, my colleague Jose, and here I sit. The usual Liaison console has been commandeered by the staff of the PEP operations crew. There’s a buzz in the room. The […]
On the recent SLAC/Fermilab/U.S. LHC trip to Washington D.C., a challenge was put to us: high-energy physics, as a field, needs a “Theory of Spinoffs”. We sell our field based on the compelling nature of the science, and it’s a great story. But, went the argument, the Congress (and […]
Today and tomorrow are the last scheduled shifts for the Babar experiment. I have the pleasure of being on shift as the Liaison yet again, sitting in the main accelerator control room and passing information between Babar and the accelerator operators. Jodi came with me and baked a bunch of […]
This week got kicked off with the news of a lawsuit, filed in Hawaii, to stop the turn on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The week got weirder. The story got some traction on the comedy show circuit. “The Daily Show” and “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” both […]
This weekend marks the final shifts of the BaBar experiment and the final operations of the PEP-II collider. The last few months have been among the most personally exciting time of my life, a time in collider physics that I had been led to believe was long dead. Of course, […]
An article in today’s NY Times, forwarded to me by a friend, notes that the LHC may face a threat other than the realities of a slipping schedule when building a one-of-a-kind, frontier physics experiment: the law. That’s right! THE LAW. [1] Specifically, a lawsuit brought in a Hawaiian court […]
It seems that every time WMAP releases a fresh analysis of its latest data, I learn something wholly new about the universe. Last week, WMAP released an analysis of five years of data [1]. The results are particularly interesting to me on one front – the cosmic neutrino background. On […]