November 2012

November 2012

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  November 30, 2012
  signal to background: Physics education program QuarkNet develops global reach
  A professional development program created in the United States to help teachers explain particle physics has caught on across the world.
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  November 27, 2012
  breaking: Stellar black widows entrap companion stars
  Of the hundreds of objects in the universe emitting gamma rays, two look to be "black widows," ancient stars extending their lives by sucking in material from companion stars. Stanford physicist Roger Romani is hot on the trail of these extreme stars.
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  November 27, 2012
  signal to background: Thanksgiving in the Main Control Room
  The daughter of the Tevatron particle collider’s Mr. Fix-It continues a tradition of providing cheer for operators stuck at work on the holiday.
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  November 26, 2012
  signal to background: Contributing to an LHC experiment, no transatlantic travel required
  Scientists participate in the CMS experiment from afar using remote operations centers.
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  November 21, 2012
  signal to background: Fermilab's first physics slam a smash hit
  Five scientists spent a Friday night on stage competing to see who could best convey the fun of particle physics.
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  November 20, 2012
  feature: A bouquet of options: Higgs factory ideas bloom
  Now that a Higgs-like boson has been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider, proposals to build colliders that churn out the new particle are gathering momentum.
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  November 19, 2012
  editorial: Web Tour
  You're invited to take an interactive tour of our new homepage.
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  November 19, 2012
  breaking: Arrow of time prefers to point forward
  To a single, isolated particle, time’s arrow could work just as well pointing forward as backward. But it doesn’t, says the BaBar collaboration.
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  November 15, 2012
  signal to background: Physics never sleeps
  Physicists from all over the world work the night shift to guide the Large Hadron Collider and its particle detectors from sunset to sunrise. Take a peek into two of the five CERN control rooms that are staffed 24 hours a day.
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  November 15, 2012
  breaking: New particle-like structure confirmed at the LHC
  Scientists at the CMS experiment at CERN have spotted an exotic combination of particles previously observed in the CDF experiment at Fermilab.
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  November 13, 2012
  deconstruction: How to make a neutrino beam
  Neutrinos are elusive particles that are difficult to study, yet they may help explain some of the biggest mysteries of our universe. Using accelerators to make neutrino beams, scientists are unveiling the neutrinos’ secrets.
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  November 12, 2012
  breaking: BOSS collaboration measures expansion of the universe 11 billion years ago
  The BOSS collaboration has looked so far back in time that they observed the period before dark energy began to dominate the largest scales of the universe.
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  November 12, 2012
  signal to background: Passing along LHC know-how to future generations
  Preserving expertise about how complicated detectors work is one of the Large Hadron Collider's biggest challenges.
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  November 8, 2012
  breaking: Lead-proton collisions yield surprising effect in CMS experiment
  CMS physicists have once again found a “ridge” in their data, this time in lead–proton collisions.
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  November 7, 2012
  breaking: Social scientists: Far-flung physicists meet face-to-face
  A tidal wave of gamma-ray scientists swept into Monterey, California, for the Fourth International Fermi Symposium, and despite the idyllic photo of a lovely local beach that graced the event poster, they didn’t come for the sun and surf. They came for science—and some face time.
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  November 5, 2012
  feature: Voyage to SNOLAB
  A growing number of scientists are looking for ways to join a dream team of experiments in a unique laboratory a mile and a half underground in Ontario. There, they seek to solve some of the biggest mysteries in physics today, including the case of missing dark matter.
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  November 5, 2012
  breaking: East Coasters brave Hurricane Sandy to keep neutrino project on schedule
  Hurricane Sandy hit the night before an important project review, but scientists, engineers and project personnel didn't let that stand in their way.
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  November 1, 2012
  breaking: Fermi telescope gazes through fog to count the stars
  A recent measurement of how many gamma rays make it through a cosmic “fog” of starlight reveals just how many stars there are in the universe.
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  November 1, 2012
  signal to background: How to woo an audience, with help from Alan Alda
  In late October, 30 scientists spent two days in a communication workshop, learning that successful communication is both simpler and riskier than they realized.