This last week has been eventful! It began with an early morning return to Dallas from Connecticut, fighting the beginning of an annoying cold. After a couple of days at home, I was on a plane again, this time to London to spend 13 days working with colleagues at […]
Physics
260 posts
The Environmental Protection Agency is home to a large number of scientists who have tried to contribute to the understanding of many issues affecting Americans: the health and safety of water sources and supplies, the contamination of air and its effects on our quality of life, and the changing of […]
I am on an approved leave from teaching and university service this semester so that I can focus on research. While I’ve had a number of things going since before the New Year, the last two weeks have been the start of the “traveling” phase of my semester. For me, […]
I awoke to the buzzing of my wristwatch. It was 4:30am. The telescope and all its accessories were already in the car. I only needed to get out of bed and dress myself. Jupiter waited. In the night sky above Allen, I was sure it was clear and that Jupiter […]
I am in the middle of spending two weeks at CERN. Week 1 just ended, and Week 2 has just begun. I reflect on ducking away from SMU for two weeks of research at CERN during a crucial time for new members of our SMU ATLAS group. The first week […]
I thought it might be nice to reflect on the physics that I am most interested in understanding during this second run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In this post, I will discuss the Higgs boson, its expected interaction with bottom quarks, and how we have come to understand […]
I just spent two weeks at CERN. Due to limited travel funds this year, I had to keep my summer time here limited to save money for other trips and my research leave in the spring of 2017. Nonetheless, this was an incredibly productive pair of weeks. I’ll reflect a […]
This summer began, for me, with a little bit of travel. The first part was for relaxation; Jodi, her oldest younger sister, and I went to Paris for a week. After that, we headed to the conference “Rencontres de Blois” for which Jodi is an organizer. In these brief “field […]
100 years ago, Albert Einstein published what is considered the foundational work of his theory of “General Relativity,” a scientific theory of space and time. Tomorrow, two large experiments and collaborations – LIGO and VIRGO – will present the status of their searches for one of the last undiscovered predictions […]
The following is the underlying text I wrote as the basis for a talk at the TEDxSMU-sponsored event, “Loyd on the Lawn.” It was held at Loyd Residential Commons at SMU, where I was invited to give a short (~10-minute) talk last Sunday night. Enjoy!
Photos from our recent trip to Baylor University for the joint meeting of the Texas Sections of the American Association of Physics Teachers, American Physical Society, and Society of Physics Students.
Yesterday, the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to two physicists – Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald – who made leading contributions to the discovery that neutrinos, very difficult-to-detect subatomic particles, can actually change from one kind to another kind spontaneously. This is called “neutrino oscillation” or […]