Fermilab to continue hunt for the Higgs

Yesterday an advisory panel at Fermilab doubled down on the center's Tevatron once again, giving the aging accelerator one last push to find the elusive Higgs Boson in the race with CERN. The panel is recommending that the instrument receive continued funding of $150-million, extending its operations through 2014. The Tevatron is currently scheduled to end operations after 2011.The information came on the heels of protests at CERN last week over the half-billion dollar budget cut imposed on that.. Read more »

An experiment to test string theory?

Michael Duff, a professor at the Imperial College in London, was at a conference in Tasmania watching a colleague give a talk on quantum entanglement when he realized the equations being presented looked rather similar to a set of equations he had created to describe string theory inside black holes. When he returned to London, he checked the formulas against each other and discovered that not only were they similar, but the equations were in fact the same.It's now thought that Duff's discovery .. Read more »

Beauty in art and physics

When a physicist talks about beauty in science, it's usually in an abstract way. Astronomers have Hubble, biologists have flowers and rainforests, and geologists have the Grand Canyon. But what does the public think of physicists? We're all bombs and particle accelerators in many people's eyes. Here's a clear example of why that's not true. Kai-hung Fung, a diagnostic radiologist at a hospital in Hong Kong, used a little art and a 3D Computed Tomography (CT) scan to create this image. It's calle.. Read more »

Free: One never used laser interferometer (building not included)

For decades Australian physicists have lusted after a gravitational wave detector, but despite their lobbying, the Southern Hemisphere still has no such instrument. According to Science Magazine's News of the Week, American's at our own Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) have concocted a scheme that could change that.The U.S. currently has two detectors, the Livingston Observatory in Louisiana and the Hanford Observatory in Washington State. Because gravitational waves - .. Read more »

City landscapes could draw storms near

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Five years ago, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, devastating New Orleans and other regions along the Mississippi River Delta. Hurricane forecasting has steadily progressed over the intervening years, which should help cities and states better prepare for devastating cyclones. Now researchers have added another piece to the forecasting puzzle by determining how the texture of landscapes can affect a storms motion. New research shows that rough areas of land, i.. Read more »

Meteorite evidence favors explosive origins

I think I lost this story this week amidst the widespread coverage of a new solar system discovered with seven planets -- but astronomers at Arizona State (Go Lumberjacks!) published new research in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday about our own solar system's origins. The ASU researchers acquired a small piece of a meteorite from a private dealer that had gotten the space rock off a local in Morocco after it was found in the Sahara desert. When the team analyzed the meteor, they found it.. Read more »

LEDs not neccesarily eco-friendly

When ultra efficient LED light bulbs emerged on the scene they were hailed as a brighter and greener way to light the world, but research announced Monday by Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico shows that might not necessarily be true. These physicists aren't some lingering agents of Thomas Edison's  they of course acknowledge LEDs are a superior technology - instead the researchers show in their paper that the potential problem lies in history and human nature. "Presented with the avai.. Read more »