in the news – 3 March

“If we don’t see it after this two year run it means that something is perhaps not the way that we think it is, either the Higgs search itself had to be amended in some way or some of its indirect evidence may be pointing us in the wrong direction,” said Professor LeCompte.

James Braatz and Cheng-Yu Kuo have measured the distance to galaxy NGC 6264 to an accuracy of 450 million light-years from Earth, give or take 9%. That’s crucial, because while it’s simple to measure how fast a galaxy is moving, you also need to know exactly where it is.

The particle detectors developed in the AIDA project will be used in a planned upgrade to the LHC; at the proposed International Linear Collider, which will study the Standard Model of physics and beyond with higher precision; Super-B factories, which aim to understand the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe; and neutrino facilities.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first International Women’s Day, we look at the crucial role that women have played in nuclear and particle physics during the past century.

…the future relies on the successful start of the LHC and discoveries there. This implies that the international linear-collider community should be ready by 2012 to propose a viable project for a machine with two detectors.