Interactions.org - Particle Physics News and Resources

Astronomers are asking volunteers to help them search for “space warps.” More commonly known as “gravitational lenses,” these are rare systems with very massive galaxies or clusters of galaxies that bend light around them so that they act rather like giant lenses in space, creating beautiful mirages.

Anyone can participate in Space Warps project, which was launched on 8 May 2013. Visit www.spacewarps.org and spot these spectacular and rare astronomical objects using data from large astronomical surveys. Astronomy enthusiasts can partake in the discovery of these magnificent lenses and help astronomers uncover the role that dark matter plays in the formation of galaxies.

Arturo Gomez, leader of the observer support group at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory–home to the Dark Energy Camera–speaks about working for more than 40 years at CTIO. English captioning is available.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4byIoR_G9ww

Neutrinos are a mystery to physicists. They exist in three different flavors and mass states and may be able to give hints about the origins of the matter-dominated universe. A new long-baseline experiment led by Fermilab called NOvA may provide some answers.

There is a live feed of the first detector block being moved at http://www.fnal.gov/pub/webcams/nova_webcam/index.html.

Watch the full video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe4veClYxkE.

On 13 March, a beam of negative hydrogen ions was injected into the first accelerator module of Linac 4, the linear accelerator which will replace Linac 2. The beam was created in the new source built for Linac 4 and accelerated from 45 kEV to 3 MeV by a radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) module, the first link in the Linac 4 accelerator chain. This crucial phase went off without a hitch.

Read More at
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/03/linac-4-accelerates-its-first-beam.

It was the longest, most costly manhunt in science for an elusive particle that was said to be key to the workings of the universe. For a generation of physicists, it was an appointment with history.

View more at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A-EZXSN1yg.

Discover the world of Quarks and Leptons with real data: Each year about 6000 high school students in 28 countries come to one of about 130 nearby universities or research centres for one day in order to unravel the mysteries of particle physics. Lectures from active scientists give insight in topics and methods of basic research at the fundaments of matter and forces, enabling the students to perform measurements on real data from particle physics experiments themselves. At the end of each day, like in an international research collaboration, the participants join in a video conference for discussion and combination of their results.

View more at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm3irM8f5OI.

View Dark energy: A new standard model for physics? on BBCNews.com

A new study using observations from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence that the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe. This discovery is a major step toward meeting one of Fermi’s primary mission goals.

Cosmic rays are subatomic particles that move through space at nearly the speed of light. About 90 percent of them are protons, with the remainder consisting of electrons and atomic nuclei. In their journey across the galaxy, the electrically charged particles become deflected by magnetic fields. This scrambles their paths and makes it impossible to trace their origins directly.

View more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3ue7cEocvI.

View more at http://cds.cern.ch/record/1516001