Both the AIP and the New York Times are reporting that elements 116 and 118 have been discovered by a collaboration between Russian and American scientists working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. This is the second time it’s been announced that element 118 has been seen, as a previous “discovery” turned… Continue reading Element 116 and 118
Category: Experiment
Antimatter Chemstry (For Small Values of Chemistry)
The AIP Physics News service last week highlighted a new result from the Athena collaboration at CERN with the headline “First Antimatter Chemistry”. That conjures images of sticking anti-carbon atoms together to make anti-buckballs, but that’s not exactly what’s going on… The experiment in the case involves the interaction between anti-protons and molecular hydrogen ions.… Continue reading Antimatter Chemstry (For Small Values of Chemistry)
Thoughts on the LHC and ILC
Back in late July, I got email from a writer for Physics World magazine (which is sort of the UK equivalent of Physics Today), asking my opinion on a few questions relating to particle physics funding. The basis for asking me (as opposed to, you know, a particle physicist) was presumably a post from April… Continue reading Thoughts on the LHC and ILC
Classic Edition: The Transporters Aren’t Working. Again.
Third and final post in a series about “teleportation” from July 2002. This one is mostly dedicated to voicing the same complaints I have about the more recent stories that kicked this whole repost business off. The more things change, the more I keep repeating myself.
Classic Edition: Beam Me a Photon, Scotty
Part two of three of an explanation of “quantum teleportation” experiments, from July of 2002. This one goes through the basics how teleportation works. I might be able to do better now, having worked through it in more detail in order to teach about it in my Quantum Optics class, but it’s been a busy… Continue reading Classic Edition: Beam Me a Photon, Scotty
Classic Edition: Spooky Interaction at a Distance
As threatened in the previous post on new “quantum teleportation” results, here’s the first of three old articles on teleportation. This one discusses EPR states and “entanglement.” It’s somewhat linkrotted– in particular, the original news article is gone, but the explanation is still ok. This dates from July of 2002, which is like 1840 in… Continue reading Classic Edition: Spooky Interaction at a Distance
The Latest in Teleportation
The latest physics news is an experimental demonstration of “teleportation” involving both light and atoms, done at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, and reported on by the Institutes of Physics and CNN, among others, and remarked on by Dave, among others. I wrote up some stuff about teleportation in the early days of this… Continue reading The Latest in Teleportation
Physics World on the LHC
So, there’s a new issue of Physics World magazine out, with a bunch of feature stories on the Large Hadron Collider. Three of these are available free online: Life at the high-energy frontier, a sort of overview of the accelerator and the people involved. Expedition to inner space, a discussion of what they hope to… Continue reading Physics World on the LHC
Confounded by High School Physics
Physics Web has a story about new discoveries in excitonic systems with the eye-catching headline BEC’s confound at higher temepratures. The main idea is that two exotic systems have been found in which quasi-particles undergo Bose-Einstein Condensation at realtively high temperatures– 19 Kelvin for a system of “polaritons,” and room temperature for a system of… Continue reading Confounded by High School Physics
Classic Edition: Needles in Haystacks Are Easy
The fourth and final post in my 2003 series attempting to explain experimental particle physics to the lay reader. This one talks about the specifics of the “pentaquark” experiment that was announced that year, and provided the inspiration for the whole thing. It should be noted that that discovery is by no means certain, but… Continue reading Classic Edition: Needles in Haystacks Are Easy