DailyDirt: The Little Things In Physics Make Big News

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Scientific discoveries often build upon past scientific discoveries, and it looks like investments in huge particle colliders are really paying off now. But even without gigantic particle accelerators, physicists have been taking some cool measurements recently. Here are just a few examples of some significant discoveries in physics that are verifying some of our models of how the universe works.

• CERN has cautiously announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle with a mass-energy of about 125-126 GeV. There's a lot of verification that still needs to be done, but it looks like they've found the "God particle" that explains how all matter has mass. CERN also said there's about a 0.000057% statistical chance of this measurement being wrong. [url]
• The faster-than-light neutrino that was seen in 2011... isn't actually faster than light. The cause of the measurement error was determined to be a loose cable. So no time traveling for you! [url]
• Some astrophysicists say they've discovered a filament of dark matter between two galaxy clusters about 2.7 billion light years away. This filament of dark matter appears to be around 58 million light years long, and the astronomers were lucky to find two galaxies oriented in a way that allowed them to measure the effects of this dark matter trail. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: astrophysicists, cern, dark matter, god particle, higgs boson, neutrino, physics, science