From New Scientist: New Scientist presents a new series featuring experts at the leading-edge of scientific discovery. The series includes prize-winning astrophysicist John Mather who discusses the groundbreaking operations of the James Webb Space Telescope. Also, Fermilab senior scientist Don Lincoln explores how Fermilab has taught us so much about our universe, future research plans and how research results aid theorists in their quest for a ‘Theory of Everything’.
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From NBC News, June 14, 2022: The faster and stronger LHC at CERN, scheduled to restart this summer, is stirring up renewed excitement in the discovery of particles that make up dark matter. While the LHC has been dormant for ten years, it has received upgrades while other accelerators like Fermilab’s Tevatron have made discoveries that point to possible “new physics.”
From Science, December 16, 2021: And the winner is….Science has declared AI-driven software that offers insights into basic biology and revealing promising new drug targets the Breakthrough of 2021. The Muon g-2 story, At last, a crack in particle physics’ standard model?, was among the finalists in this impressive listing of science innovations that occurred this year. Read more about the winner and other amazing science discoveries recognized by Science.
From CNN, July 1, 2021: Fermilab’s Don Lincoln explains how the Hubble Telescope housed on the Space Shuttle Discovery has stopped operating, but the James Webb Space Telescope may soon be replacing it with a hundred times more power.
From Forbes, Feb. 12, 2021: In June 2020, results from an experiment located in Italy suggested that dark matter may have been directly observed. Another experiment, conducted in China, has announced consistent data. Has dark matter been discovered? Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln explains why we’ll only know in retrospect using the next generation of detectors.
From Forbes, Jan. 19, 2021: Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln contextualizes the discovery of the most distant (and therefore oldest) supermassive black hole found thus far, which is 10 trillion times brighter than our sun.
For physicists, seeing is not always believing.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today awarded the Nobel Prize in physics to theorists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert to recognize their work developing the theory of what is now known as the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass. U.S. scientists played a significant role in advancing the theory and in discovering the particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson.