Author Archives: woit

Spreading Wild Rumors

Posted on December 7, 2009 by woit

One effect of Nature’s embargo policy is to encourage the spread of wild rumors. It’s almost part of the mission statement of this blog to participate in this, so I feel I must link to this. Update: Nature unequivocally denies … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

A Black Future

Posted on December 5, 2009 by woit

Tom Siegfried, the editor of Science News, seems to have decided to join with Michio Kaku in the science-fiction as science business. He marks the startup of collisions at the LHC with A Black Future, an article about how “the … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 19 Comments

50 Years of Nobel Memories in High Energy Physics

Posted on December 4, 2009 by woit

Over the past two days, CERN has been hosting a program consisting mostly of talks by Nobel prize winners in high energy physics, under the title 50 Years of Nobel Memories in High Energy Physics. It has been a while … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments

Sci-Fi Science

Posted on December 2, 2009 by woit

I watched the first two episodes of Michio Kaku’s Sci-Fi Science show last night (for a review, see here). The format of the show is that Kaku uses supposedly real physics to design on his laptop a revolutionary new device, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 49 Comments

LHC at the High Energy Frontier

Posted on November 29, 2009 by woit

A few minutes ago, one of the beams of the LHC was ramped up to an energy of 1180 GeV, besting the Tevatron’s top beam energy of 980 GeV. Update: Actually the beam was lost at 1040 GeV, which is … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 18 Comments

One Reason Science is Having Trouble Banishing Religious Thinking

Posted on November 29, 2009 by woit

Andrew Sullivan, under the title String Theory and Miracles quotes part of a blog posting entitled One reason science is having trouble banishing religious thinking at the Democracy in America site (the original posting text is not there right now, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Short Items

Posted on November 27, 2009 by woit

To get an idea of what’s going on at CERN not at the LHC, but at the theoretical end of things, take a look at the presentations at the recent CERN-TH retreat. I was worried that this blog marked the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

First Collisions at the LHC

Posted on November 23, 2009 by woit

Things evidently went extremely well over the weekend at the LHC, with simultaneous circulating beams achieved this morning. Speculation is that first collisions (at the injection energy of 450 GeV/beam) are imminent. Places for up to the minute information include … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 13 Comments

Higgs Escapes Part of Exclusion Region

Posted on November 19, 2009 by woit

This past winter a combined analysis of data from the two Tevatron experiments showed at 95% confidence level that the Higgs mass could not be in the range 160-170 GeV. This was a better result than expected: statistically the experiments … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 5 Comments

LHC Update

Posted on November 19, 2009 by woit

Yesterday the LHC Hardware Commissioning Coordination Team announced the end of the 2009 Hardware Commissioning Campaign as all 8 LHC sectors were declared commissioned and ready for beam. A two day checkout period is now underway, which should have the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 5 Comments