breaking
July 2012
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July 27, 2012breaking: Physics doo-wop group's last standAt their final performance on July 21, it was apparent that the members of Les Horribles Cernettes, a physics-themed doo-wop group, loved every proton of the more than 500 people that packed the annual Hardronic Music Festival at CERN.
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July 26, 2012breaking: Endeavour crew members visit CERN to commemorate year of AMSFive U.S. astronauts spoke at CERN Wednesday to celebrate a year of data-collection by the largest experiment in space.
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July 24, 2012breaking: A little light (or rather, massive) Higgs musicThanks to a few creative scientists, the recent discovery of a Higgs-like particle is music to more than just particle physicists’ ears.
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July 23, 2012breaking: Precious cargo: Dark matter experiment set to move undergroundFor the past two years, COUPP-4, a 4-kilogram bubble chamber experiment, has searched for signs of dark matter a mile underground at SNOLAB in Sudbury, Ontario. Now that experiment is about to get company – its big brother is moving in.
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July 20, 2012breaking: Department of Energy advances Fermilab’s Mu2e experimentLast week, Fermilab’s planned Mu2e experiment passed the second step of the Department of Energy's five-step approval process, only about a month after the DOE’s initial review.
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July 20, 2012breaking: Most sensitive dark-matter detector constrains search for WIMPsThe XENON collaboration announced this week that they detected no signs of potential dark matter particles during the last 13 months. Their results will be used to narrow the search for the unseen particles that scientists think make up most of the matter in the universe.
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July 18, 2012breaking: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope nears final design phaseThe Large Synoptic Survey Telescope just received another boost. The National Science Foundation announced today that it will advance the giant telescope to the final design stage.
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July 18, 2012breaking: Decision time: Vote for your favorite HiggsVote for your three favorites from a selection of the many impressive entries we received. Your top choices will appear in a gallery in the August issue of symmetry.
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July 16, 2012breaking: DOE facilities receive praise from Republicans and Democrats alikeIn a strong showing of bipartisan support, both Republican and Democrat members of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment offered robust praise for the U.S. Department of Energy national scientific facilities at a hearing last month.
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July 13, 2012breaking: Dark-matter experiment moves undergroundSanford Lab celebrates the arrival of the LUX dark-matter experiment deep inside a former mine in South Dakota with today’s live broadcast of the public radio program “Innovation” from LUX’s new home at SURF, and tomorrow’s Sanford Lab science festival.
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July 11, 2012breaking: Physicist by day, soul man by nightThis Sunday, guitarist Charlie Wayne played for a crowd of about 10,000 with his up-and-coming Chicago soul band. The next morning, he went back to his day job at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where he investigates the cosmos – and answers to his given name, Dan Hooper.
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July 10, 2012breaking: Google Science Fair winner visits CERN during Higgs weekGoogle Science Fair winner Shree Bose could not have picked a better time to visit CERN. She was there from June 27 to July 4, the day scientists there announced the discovery of a Higgs-like boson.
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July 9, 2012breaking: The statistics of scientific discoveryIn this video, Fermilab physicist explains how figuring out whether a discovery is real or just a matter of luck is similar to judging the fairness of a pair of dice. It all comes down to statistics.
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July 4, 2012breaking: Photoshop contest: Where have you seen the Higgs?Early this morning, scientists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced that they have observed a new particle that may eventually prove to be the Higgs boson. Have you spotted the mysterious particle? Submit your photographic evidence!
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July 4, 2012breaking: Search for Higgs boson at Large Hadron Collider reveals new particlePhysicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced today that they have observed a new particle. Whether the particle has the properties of the predicted Higgs boson remains to be seen.
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July 2, 2012breaking: July issue of symmetry now onlineThe July issue of symmetry hits virtual newsstands today, with insight into the hunt for the Higgs boson, a new accelerator test bed at SLAC, and the path less traveled.
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July 2, 2012breaking: Signs of Higgs grow at Tevatron experiments, yet no discovery; all eyes on July 4 LHC announcementAfter more than 10 years of gathering and analyzing data produced by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Tevatron collider, scientists from the CDF and DZero collaborations have found their strongest indication to date for the long-sought Higgs particle.
June 2012
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June 29, 2012breaking: What does it take to claim discovery of the Higgs?If the Higgs exists, why has discovering it taken so long – and why, if no definitive discovery is announced next week, might it continue to take even longer?
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June 28, 2012breaking: Scientists discover that Milky Way was struck some 100 million years ago, still rings like a bellOur galaxy, the Milky Way, is a large spiral galaxy surrounded by dozens of smaller satellite galaxies. Scientists have long theorized that occasionally these satellites will pass through the disk of the Milky Way, perturbing both the satellite and the disk. A team of astronomers from Canada and the United States have discovered what may well be the smoking gun of such an encounter, one that occurred close to our position in the galaxy and relatively recently, at least in the cosmological sense.
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June 26, 2012breaking: The unreasonable Tevatron: Calculating the economic impact of basic scienceDuring a recent symposium at Fermilab, a speaker took the stage to defend government investment in basic science. He used an odd tactic: He called particle physics unreasonable.
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