Archive for March, 2012

We’ve been working hard at Fermilab this year, and have been making several trips up as our SeaQuest experiment collects data.  We recently spotted a sign on the Fermilab campus:

For the record, the OPERA result suggesting that neutrinos go faster than the speed of light is thoroughly dead, and all of the nails are quite securely in the coffin.  The experiment was refuted twice by ICARUS, and then OPERA eventually traced the problem down to a connection between a fiber optic cable and a hardware board.  Apparently, the spokesperson for OPERA is stepping down, but don’t try to read any scandal here.  Science is hard, which is why unexplainable results are both exciting and terrifying, but in the end we will learn what holds up in the lab.

Happy Fun Friday.

I ran across a great article on space.com about our new season at http://www.space.com/14951-spring-equinox-early-arrival-2012.html.  From the article:

Across much of the United States, this has been an unusually mild winter, especially for those living east of the Mississippi. Not a few people have noted that spring seems to have come early this year.  Of course, in a meteorological sense that could be true, but in 2012 it will also be true in an astronomical sense as well, because this year spring will make its earliest arrival since the late 19th century: 1896, to be exact.

Remember, the equinox is defined as the time when the sun’s path in the sky intersects the Earth’s equator, so this is a well-defined time.  The equilux is defined as the day when you get exactly 12 hours each of day and night, and this date changes depends on where you are in the world. As for the weather deciding to go ahead and actually act like Spring, that is something else entirely…

-Dr. D

This is too good to pass up:

Colbert Report, March 7 2012 on Hulu

Of course, nearly every single detail he gives is wrong, but in the end, he does a remarkable job in proving that physics jokes are harder to make.

For the latest on actual Higgs news, check out the recent Physics Viewpoint by Howard Haber.  Overall, while we don’t have enough statistical evidence to officially claim discovery of the Higgs, there can be no doubt by now that we have found it.