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From William & Mary, Feb. 15, 2019: Scientist Patricia Vahle, a William & Mary professor and NOvA co-spokesperson, Patricia Vahle, Mansfield Professor of Physics at William & Mary, gives a talk on “The Quest to Understand Neutrino Masses” at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. Neutrinos are one of the most abundant particles in the universe. And because of their interesting properties, physicists look to a fuller understanding of neutrinos to help unravel the universe’s mysteries.

With the warmth of holiday cheer in the air, some physicists decided to hit the pub after a conference in December 2014 and do what many physicists tend to do after work: keep talking about physics. That evening’s topic of conversation: dark energy particles. The chat would lead to a new line of investigation at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Every second, the universe grows a little bigger. Scientists are using the LHC to try to find out why.

From Saense, Feb. 14, 2019: Uma parte vital de um dos maiores experimentos da física de partículas atual foi desenvolvida no Brasil. O Arapuca é um detector de luz a ser instalado no Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment — projeto que busca descobrir novas propriedades dos neutrinos, partícula elementar com muito pouca massa e que viaja a uma velocidade muito próxima à da luz.

From FAPESP, Feb. 13, 2019: Uma parte vital de um dos maiores experimentos da física de partículas atual foi desenvolvida no Brasil. O Arapuca é um detector de luz a ser instalado no Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment — projeto que busca descobrir novas propriedades dos neutrinos, partícula elementar com muito pouca massa e que viaja a uma velocidade muito próxima à da luz.

From Aurora Beacon-News, Fermilab scientists and engineers are hoping to understand neutrinos — tiny particles that many feel hold the key to answering many questions about the universe — and are using a very large thermometer to do it.

From 365 Days of Astronomy, Feb. 9, 2019: In this podcast, The Dark Energy Survey started in 2013 to map dark energy over 5000 square degrees of sky. Writer and poet Amy Catanzano visited Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory during the Dark Energy Survey. In this podcast, Amy discusses her work in quantum poetics, her experience with the Dark Energy Survey and shares some of her poetry.

From The Beacon-News, Feb. 10, 2019: Thousands of children and their parents put science on their radar Sunday as Fermilab held its annual open house event. For four hours, families were able to tour and explore the space Fermilab calls, “America’s premier particle physics and accelerator laboratory” and, according to staff, “show what we do and what’s possible here.”

If one wanted to follow the recipe for the universe, it would call for about 14 parts dark energy, 5 parts dark matter and 1 part visible matter. In a perpetually expanding cosmic landscape that reaches far beyond what even the most powerful telescopes can see, this might be hard to visualize. Physicists Katy Grimm and Katharine Leney found a solution for this: Use this recipe for the cosmos to bake a proportionally correct dark matter cake.

From University of Missouri – Kansas City’s University News, Feb. 6, 2019: Sánchez, a scientist at Iowa State University, is a part of Fermilab’s NOvA neutrino experiment and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. She also co-leads the ANNIE experiment at Fermilab.

From Live Science, Feb. 5, 2019: This article dives deep into the little teensy tiny particles that are fundamental building blocks of matter. As far as scientists can tell, quarks themselves are not made of anything smaller. That may change in the future as we learn more, but it’s good enough for now.