DailyDirt: Making Progress In Particle Physics
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
If you look at the history of physics, there have been plenty of significant discoveries (as well as misconceptions). As technology gets better and better, the time interval between notable findings seems to be decreasing -- and it looks like we're making progress in understanding how the universe works. (But who knows, we could also discover some phenomenon so puzzling that we'd have to re-write everything.) Obviously, we don't know everything yet, but here are just a few recent milestones that bolster the Standard Model of particle physics.- The Higgs Boson has been found, and the Nobel prize was bestowed on Peter Higgs and Francois Englert for the theoretical discovery of a fundamental particle that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass. Higgs submitted a paper in 1964 describing his namesake particle, and the evidence to support its existence was found in 2012. [url]
- The first detection of gravity waves is on the way, optimistically to be seen in the next few years. Physicists have been looking for over 40 years, but now we have more accurate instruments and also a better idea of how often we should see something (just about once a week). [url]
- For nearly two decades, scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory were trying to create a single top quark using the weak nuclear force, and they've finally announced they did it. This announcement comes *after* the shutdown of Fermilab's Tevatron because it took some time to analyze the data from over 500 trillion proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron from 2001 to 2011. [url]
Filed Under: francois englert, gravity waves, higgs boson, particle accelerators, peter higgs, physics, standard model, tevatron, top quark
