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The Pioneer Anomaly & Other Breaking Physics News

Posted by kdawson on from the explaining-the-unseen dept.

David Harris, editor-in-chief at Symmetrymagazine.org (a joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC), sends us to his blog covering the American Physical Society meeting now going on in St. Louis. Among the breaking physics news relating to topics we have discussed in the past: results that explain about 1/3 of the Pioneer anomaly by differential heat flow in the spacecraft; an analysis of the Fermilab Tevatron's chances of spotting the Higgs "God particle"; and a hint that an Italian team has replicated their results from the year 2000 pointing to a detection of dark matter.

4 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Before LHC though? by stevedcc · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The article states that Fermilab can begin exploring to 160GeV in the summer. LHC is due to be switched on before that. From all I've read, LHC has a MUCH better chance of being sure of what it finds at around those energies. I think any article on this subject can't even pretend to be balanced without discussing LHC.

    --
    todo - The developer's equivalent of confession: "Forgive me Father, for I have sinned..."
  2. Re:Enough of the "God Particle" please by yomegaman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think it was Leon Lederman who coined it in his book. He is definitely a high-energy physicist, he was director of Fermilab for years and won a Nobel Prize for discovering the bottom quark. I agree with the sentiment, though, if I never heard it again it would be fine with me. I read the book some years ago but can't remember why he called it that.

    --
    ...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
  3. Fermi and the Higgs by stox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sadly, 10% of Fermi's staff is being laid off, and the rest must take a mandatory week off of unpaid leave every two months due to the funding SNAFU at the DOE.

    --
    "To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
  4. Re:Enough of the "God Particle" please by SteelAngel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The quarks are supposed to be named in pairs thusly:

    Up down

    Strange Charm

    Truth Beauty

    But somewhere in the 70's some particle group with little sense of wonder renamed Truth and Beauty to Top and Bottom, thus leaving Strange and Charm as sounding anachronistic.