breaking
March 2012
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March 16, 2012breaking: CERN spin-off: More efficient solar panelsRetired CERN physicist Cristoforo Benvenuti learned a thing or two about building a better solar panel through his work on particle accelerators. The Geneva International Airport recently ordered 300.
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March 14, 2012breaking: Scientists send encoded message through rock via neutrino beamScientists recently proved possible a way to converse when radio waves won’t do. For the first time, physicists have successfully transmitted a message using neutrinos.
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March 9, 2012breaking: Scientists continue to see puzzling behavior in top quarks, reaffirm strength of Tevatron experimentsThe Tevatron may be shut down for good, but – as evidenced by the catalogue of results presented at this week’s Rencontres de Moriond conference – the collider’s experiments still have plenty to say. In some areas, the Fermilab experiments still hold the advantage over those at the higher-powered Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
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March 9, 2012breaking: A sM*A*S*Hing CERN visitOn March 7, Alan Alda, the actor best known for playing medic Hawkeye Pierce on yesteryear’s TV series M*A*S*H, visited the home of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN.
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March 8, 2012breaking: Daya Bay experiment makes key measurement, paves way for future discoveriesAn international collaboration of physicists working on a neutrino experiment in southern China announced today they have made a difficult measurement scientists have been chasing for more than a decade. The results of the Daya Bay neutrino experiment open an important window into understanding the behavior of neutrinos, and now the race is on to determine the implications. Two American experiments, one proposed and one under construction, seem well positioned to take the next steps.
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March 7, 2012breaking: Tevatron experiments see possible signs of the Higgs boson in favored regionTevatron physicists told attendees of the Rencontres de Moriond conference this morning that they had found excesses in their data suggestive of a Higgs with a mass between 115-135 gigaelectronvolts. A few months ago, LHC physicists announced similar bumps indicating a Higgs with a mass of between 124-126 GeV.
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March 5, 2012breaking: LHCb experiment squeezes the space for expected new physicsThe LHCb collaboration set the Standard Model on its surest footing yet in results announced at the Rencontres de Moriond conference today.
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March 5, 2012breaking: South Pole scientists seek neutrino hotspots to unravel cosmic mysteryScientists at the IceCube experiment recently announced the results of their inquiry into whether two of the cosmos' greatest mysteries are related.
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March 2, 2012breaking: March 2012 issue of symmetry availableToday marks the launch of a new era: Starting today symmetry magazine will be published once a month online and sent to subscribers in an easy-to-access email format.
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March 2, 2012breaking: Fermilab's DZero experiment weighs in on W boson massThe DZero experiment at Fermilab's Tevatron collider made public today its most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson. Knowing the mass of this force-carrying elementary particle confirms the Standard Model of particle physics and puts constraints on the mass of the Higgs boson.
February 2012
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February 28, 2012breaking: Scientists put detectors to the test, a few particles at a timeAt 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.
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February 27, 2012breaking: Webcast: Combining science disciplines for modern cancer treatmentA webcast of the public lecture “Treating cancer in the XXI century: biology, physics and genomics,” is available online.
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February 23, 2012breaking: World's best measurement of W boson mass tests Standard Model, Higgs boson limitsToday, 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.
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February 23, 2012breaking: Faster-than-light neutrinos explained?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.
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February 16, 2012breaking: February 2012 issue of symmetry availableOur 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.
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February 14, 2012breaking: Tomorrow: Live underground tour of the CMS detector on Google+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.
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February 13, 2012breaking: CERN plans for even more intense year of LHC physicsCERN 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.
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February 9, 2012breaking: CERN hosts Swiss semi-finals for international science communication competitionCERN 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.
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February 2, 2012breaking: Introducing LHC LunchThe busy cafeteria known as Restaurant 1 is generally The Place to meet anyone at CERN. So, in order to gather stories from U.S.-based researchers working here, I met with eight of them over lunch.
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February 1, 2012breaking: Calculating the universeSince 2000, the three Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS I, II, and III) have surveyed well over a quarter of the night sky, producing the biggest 3-D color map of the universe ever made. Now, scientists have used this visual information for the most accurate computation yet of how matter clumped together – from a time when the universe was only half its present age until now.
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Welcome to the new symmetry! We've recently combined the magazine with our symmetry breaking blog; now you can find all articles—including feature stories, “explain it in 60 seconds” articles and blog posts—in one location. Below you will find all symmetry breaking blog posts, past and present. Do you like what you see? Have suggestions? Please let us know.