Tag Archives: particle physics
Challenging the neutrino signal anomaly
A gentle reminder before we begin: you’re allowed to be interested in particle physics. 😉 Neutrinos are among the most mysterious particles in physics. They are extremely light, electrically neutral, and interact so weakly with matter that trillions of them … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged Booster Neutrino Beamline, cosmic rays, Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, Fermilab, MicroBooNE, MiniBooNE, muons, neutrino oscillation, neutrinos, particle physics, SN 1987A, Standard Model, time projection chamber
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“Who are we?”
From ‘‘The physics community has never split like this’: row erupts over plans for new Large Hadron Collider’, The Guardian, March 29, 2025: However, if the FCC were given the go-ahead, it could lock up funds for decades and end … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged CERN, Future Circular Collider, Large Hadron Collider, Nirmalya Kajuri, particle physics, Sabine Hossenfelder, The Guardian
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You’re allowed to be interested in particle physics
This piece appeared in The Hindu today. I wrote the lead article, about why scientists are so interested in an elementary particle called the top quark. Long story short: the top quark is the heaviest elementary particle, and because all … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Higgs boson, mathematical physics, particle physics, Shreya Dasgupta, The Hindu, top quark
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The Higgs boson and I
My first byline as a professional journalist (a.k.a. my first byline ever) was oddly for a tech story – about the advent of IPv6 internet addresses. I started writing it after 7 pm, had to wrap it up by 9 … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes
Tagged blogging, Higgs boson, particle physics, science journalism
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US experiments find hint of a break in the laws of physics
At 9 pm India time on April 7, physicists at an American research facility delivered a shot in the arm to efforts to find flaws in a powerful theory that explains how the building blocks of the universe work. Physicists … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged anomalous magnetic dipole moment, dark energy, dark matter, Fermilab Muon g-2, g-2 anomaly, Higgs boson, Large Hadron Collider, LHCb, muon dipole moment, Muon g-2, neutrino masses, New Physics, particle physics, physics beyond the standard model, Standard Model, Standard Model of particle physics, supersymmetry
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On resource constraints and merit
In the face of complaints about how so few women have been awarded this year’s Swarnajayanti Fellowships in India, some scientists pushed back asking which of the male laureates who had been selected should have been left out instead. This is a … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Big Science, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Department of Science and Technology, India-based Neutrino Observatory, ISRO, Jadugoda, jugaad, let teachers teach, NASA, particle physics, R&D funding, resource constraint, Sabine Hossenfelder, Sean Carroll, Superconducting Super Collider, Swarnajayanti Fellowships, transparency, Vannevar Bush
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My heart of physics
Every July 4, I have occasion to remember two things: the discovery of the Higgs boson, and my first published byline for an article about the discovery of the Higgs boson. I have no trouble believing it’s been eight years … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Scicomm
Tagged ATLAS detector, Atomki, axions, CEPC, CERN, CMS detector, hedonism, Higgs boson, Higgs factory, Large Hadron Collider, particle physics, Quantum mechanics, Sabine Hossenfelder, thermodynamics, XENON excess
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Peter Higgs, self-promoter
I was randomly rewatching The Big Bang Theory on Netflix today when I spotted this gem: Okay, maybe less a gem and more a shiny stone, but still. The screenshot, taken from the third episode of the sixth season, shows … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged C.R. Hagen, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Englert, Francois Englert, Gerald Guralnik, Gerardus t Hooft, Greenpeace, Higgs, Higgs boson, Higgs mechanism, Large Hadron Collider, particle physics, Peter Higgs, Philip Warren Anderson, Robert Brout, Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory, Tom Kibble, Wolf Prize
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Science v. tech, Ã la Cixin Liu
A fascinating observation by Cixin Liu in an interview in Public Books, to John Plotz and translated by Pu Wang (numbers added): … technology precedes science. (1) Way before the rise of modern science, there were so many technologies, so … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Science
Tagged Bernhard Riemann, Cixin Liu, glass ceiling, Large Hadron Collider, mathematics, non-Euclidean geometry, particle physics, Riemannian geometry, technology, Three Body Problem
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A journey through Twitter and time, with the laws of physics
Say you’re in a dark room and there’s a flash. The light travels outward in all directions from the source, and the illumination seems to expand in a sphere. This is a visualisation of how the information contained in light … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged B0 meson, Big Bang cosmology, CPT symmetry, entropy, hypersurface, light cones, particle physics, special theory of relativity, time, time reversal symmetry, Twitter, weak nuclear force
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