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{ Category Archives } High Energy Physics

high energy physics. particle physics. theory. etc.

Today’s slightly disconcerting announcement

at 1700: “Gamma ray testing is commencing in Building 233. All personnel should clear the area. Gamma ray testing is commencing in Building 233. All personnel should clear the area.”   Five-hours-too-late ObArcher: “Do you want giant ants? Because this is how you get giant ants.”   Five-hours-too-late career realization: There went my chance to […]

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Things we didn’t know

When I was in grad school: Then, not within a factor of two. Now H0 = 67.80 ± 0.77 Then ηearth > 10-9. Now ηearth = 0.22 ± 0.08 Suspicions about cold dark matter, vague notions about the cosmological constant being so out of sorts between the Stand Model and GR. Now, 96% of the […]

The demise of SSC caused the current financial crisis

The cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider was an idiot thing to do for any number of reasons. First, it still would have been the most powerful accelerator on earth, with the most luminosity. We would have found the Higgs in 1996, instead of not quite yet in 2011. We rarely get measurable quantities like […]

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NPR fail

Why is NPR interviewing a theoretical string physicist, someone as far removed from experiment as it’s possible to be and still in be in physics, about OPERA’s new experimental FTL neutrino results?  Arrgh.