Maria Teresa Dova has been instrumental in bringing scientists in Argentina new opportunities to participate in particle physics and astrophysics experiments, including one that co-discovered the Higgs boson.

What keeps galaxies from flying apart? What is the invisible mass that bends light in space? For now, we’re calling it dark matter, and this Oct. 31, laboratories around the world are shining a light on the search for it. Dark Matter Day events include live webcasts with researchers, dark matter scavenger hunts and a Reddit AMA.

Feeling left out of some traditional paths to community in particle physics, a group of Latin American researchers created their own way to connect.

From UChicago News, Oct. 18, 2019: The Department of Energy has honored University of Chicago scientists Josh Frieman, also of Fermilab, and Ian Foster, also of Argonne National Laboratory, for their transformative research and scientific leadership, selecting them as part of its inaugural Office of Science Distinguished Scientist Fellowship program. Frieman was listed for “pioneering advances in the science of dark energy and cosmic acceleration, including leading the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-II Supernova Survey, co-founding the Dark Energy Survey and service as its director.”

From MIT Technology Review, Oct. 21, 2019: We’ve seen ripples in space-time only when the universe’s biggest events occur. Now there might be a way to spot them ahead of time. MAGIS-100 is a project designed to see whether shooting frozen atoms with lasers can be used to observe ultrasensitive signals that might be stretching through space-time. If successful, it could help usher in a new era of “atom interferometry” that could reveal some of the secrets of gravitational waves, dark matter, quantum mechanics, and other heady topics.

Ground-based experiments designed to study the cosmic microwave background have gotten larger and more sophisticated over time. Now, nearly 200 scientists who have up until this point worked on different competing CMB experiments have joined forces to propose a fourth-generation experiment, the largest ground-based one yet, called CMB-S4.

From University of Maryland, Oct. 17, 2019: Fermilab scientist Charles Thangaraj received the 40 under 40 Chicago Scientists award at the 2nd Annual Halo Awards on Oct. 12 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The Halo Awards ceremony recognizes scientists for their dedication to translating research into real-world applications that meaningfully impact people’s lives.

From Brookhaven National Laboratory, Oct. 11, 2019: Dmitri Denisov, a leading physicist and spokesperson of the DZero experiment, has been named deputy associate lab director for high-energy physics at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In this role, Denisov is responsible for Brookhaven’s strategic planning in high-energy physics and oversees a wide range of particle physics projects at the lab.

In their ongoing search for the mysterious dark matter that makes up 85% of our universe, the particle physics community turns its sights to particles of low mass. The Department of Energy announced that it is providing funding for two Fermilab initiatives to develop experimental designs for experiments that will be highly sensitive to the smallest particles of dark matter. Following the development of the experimental designs, the next phase of funding will be subject to additional reviews and approval.

From CERN, Oct. 15, 2019: A new result by the CMS Collaboration narrows down the mass of the Higgs boson to a precision of 0.1%. After reporting the observation of the Higgs boson at the CERN LHC in 2012, scientists the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have been busy understanding exactly its place within the standard model of particle physics. Any straying from expectations could be an indication of new physics.