Author Archives: Jon Butterworth

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About Jon Butterworth

UCL Physics prof, works on LHC, writes (books, Cosmic Shambles and elsewhere). Citizen of England, UK, Europe & Nowhere, apparently.

Swinging cats and levitating frogs

Congratulations to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov on winning the Nobel prize in physics – not for their frog-levitating work, but for groundbreaking studies of graphene On The Guardian.

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Keep calm, carry on, but don’t keep quiet

See also Chapter 4.1 of Smashing Physics. I have been dealing with cuts in science since 2007. It can be draining and depressing, but I have learned at least two important lessons. The HERA collider started up for the first … Continue reading

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Health and Safety in Particle Physics II

After Lily’s post on poor risk assessment in particle physics, I thought I should bring to your attention the risk of putting your hand in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – as discussed by Ed Copeland and his colleagues at … Continue reading

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A surprise from the LHC already!

The CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced a surprise yesterday which may dramatically change our ideas about quarks, gluons and protons. Continued at The Guardian.

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