Dark Matters

This is great.

I had nothing to do with it, it happened in the 95% of the Physics Department (and of the lives of my PhD students) about which I know nothing.

I recommend you watch it and form your own impressions before reading my thoughts, but I have some anyway if you’re interested.

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The trouble-makers of particle physics

The chances are you have heard quite a bit about the Higgs boson. The goody-two-shoes of particle physics, it may have been hard to find, but when it was discovered it was just as the theory – the Standard Model – said it should be. It has followed all the rules, so far. Neutrinos, on the other hand, are trouble.

Read on… 

jonHeaders

 

 

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Dark Matter, U2 and NASA wee

A Science Shambles Blog Network podcast specialrecorded a couple of weeks ago in a basement in Bloomsbury

Maybe all the maths is just a better metaphor than a sock

 

 

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Playful Explorations

Another review of Atom Land , and two other books.

nearctic traveller's avatarNearcticTraveller

Atom Land: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (And Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics by Jon Butterworth. The Experiment. New York. 2018.

A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age by Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman. Simon & Schuster. New York. 2017.

Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway by Siobhan Roberts. Bloomsbury USA. 2015.

 These three books form a progression from the most concrete to the most abstract or, taking a different point of view, from the most serious to the most playful. At the same time all three are in different ways, highly imaginative.

The first is an account of particle physics, framed as a voyage into the unknown waters of the atomic and subatomic scales in the natural world, accompanied by charts at the beginning of each section that map physicists’ increasing knowledge as they probe matter at ever higher…

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