PhysicsWeb has a story about a new theory of axions that claims to resolve some discrepancies between past experiments. Two previous experiments looking for axions– hypothetical weakly interacting particles that might be an explanation for dark matter– have found conflicting results: the CAST experiment looking for axions produced in the Sun found nothing, while the… Continue reading New Particles and Epicycles
Category: Experiment
Scientist Cleared, Process Unclear
The New York Times reports that Purdue has officially cleared Rusi Taleyarkhan of charges of scientific wrongdoing over his claim to have produced nuclear fusion on a tabletop through the magic of sonoluminescence. You might recall that these claims were made a couple of years ago, but nobody else has been able to replicate them.… Continue reading Scientist Cleared, Process Unclear
Beware the Professor’s Negation Field
Piled Higher and Deepr nails it this week: A Pofessor’s Negation Field is the unexplained phenomenon whereby mere spatial proximity to an experimental set-up causes all working demonstrations to fail, despite the apparent laws of Physics or how many times it worked right before he/she walked in the room. I haven’t been on the faculty… Continue reading Beware the Professor’s Negation Field
Moving Light
A marginally less cranky physics post than the previous: the big story in my area of physics this week is probably the Harvard experiment involving the storage and transport of light pulses. Like the ILC announcement, this has been written up in the Times, and you can also read the Harvard press release or the… Continue reading Moving Light
Requiescat in Pace
SDL 5401-G1, October 2001- February 6, 2007 SDL 5401-G1 (“Sid” to friends) died today of static shock, after five years of service in a grating-locked diode laser system. He had survived three lab floods, and more than a dozen power outages, but succombed to electric shock following a mishap with a Tesla coil. He is… Continue reading Requiescat in Pace
Physics Lab, By the Numbers
Time spent locating the parts for the Compton Effect experiment: 15 minutes. Time spent dragging lead bricks for radiation shielding into the lab: 10 minutes. Time spent bulding little lead houses for the hot 137Cs source and Photo-Multiplier Tube (PMT): 15 minutes. Time spent trying to find somebody who knew the administrator password for the… Continue reading Physics Lab, By the Numbers
Hopeful Abstracts and Extra Motivation
Late spring/ early summer is Conference Season in academic science, with lots of meetings scheduled during the academic break, so that everybody can attend without cutting into their teaching responsibilities (of course, our trimester calendar means we’re still in session for most of these, but whatever…). The peak time for conferences in my subfield is… Continue reading Hopeful Abstracts and Extra Motivation
Artificial Atoms, Real Photons
Eurekalert has a press release about new results involving “articifical atoms” at Yale. This is new work appearing in this week’s Nature from the Schoelkopf lab. The term “artificial atoms,” while evocative, doesn’t really mean what you might think (the name they give it on their own page is Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics, which is more… Continue reading Artificial Atoms, Real Photons
Dorky Poll: Favorite Tool
In the comments to the post where I noted how many more people had least favorite textbooks than favorite ones, dr. dave writes: Textbooks… particularly SCIENCE textbooks, are not really written to be ENJOYED by anyone. They tend to be purely utilitarian. Asking for someone’s favorite textbook is kind of like asking someone to choose… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Favorite Tool
Searching for the Higgs Boson
Cosmic Variance finally got themselves an experimentalist, John Conway of CDF, and he hits the ground running with a nice post about the search for the Higgs boson: I’ve been looking for the Higgs boson for almost 20 years. So there I was, on a Saturday morning in December, at CERN as it so happened,… Continue reading Searching for the Higgs Boson