A communication resource from the world's particle physics laboratories.
“The result is a milestone in the history of particle physics. Ever since the discovery of the D meson more than 40 years ago, particle physicists have suspected that CP violation also occurs in this system, but it was only now, using essentially the full data sample collected by the experiment, that the LHCb collaboration has finally been able to observe the effect,” said CERN Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen.
The interior vacuum "tank" of TRIUMF's main cyclotron, the largest in the world. (Courtesy of TRIUMF)
“This investment from the federal government will allow TRIUMF to realize its full potential,” said Dr. Digvir Jayas, Chair of the TRIUMF Board of Management. “By leveraging ARIEL, IAMI, and TRIUMF Innovations, TRIUMF will continue to be a global leader in translating science and technology into innovation and commercialization. Today’s announcement represents a major milestone for the lab’s community of university members, researchers, students, users, industry partners and collaborators, and for all the people the lab serves.”
This new complex of buildings, located near Fermilab’s Wilson Hall, will host the 215-meter-long (700-foot-long) PIP-II particle accelerator, the new heart of the Fermilab accelerator complex. Credit: Fermilab
“The PIP-II accelerator project will fuel discovery at Fermilab for decades to come, facilitating new innovations and new insights into our universe. I’m excited for the further cooperation between America’s premier particle physics and accelerator laboratory and its international partners, and the resulting better understanding of the universe.”
Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar
The proton spin puzzle: Scientists want to know how different constituents of the proton contribute to its spin, a fundamental property that plays a role in how these building blocks give rise to nearly all visible matter in the universe. Pieces of the puzzle include the orbital angular momentum of quarks and gluons (top left), gluon spin (top right) and quark and antiquark spin (bottom). The latest data from RHIC reveal that the antiquarks' contribution is more complex than previously thought.
“This measurement shows that the quark piece of the proton spin puzzle is made of several pieces,” said James Drachenberg, a deputy spokesperson for STAR from Abilene Christian University. “It’s not a boring puzzle; it’s not evenly divided. There’s a more complicated picture and this result is giving us the first glimpse of what that picture looks like.”
Belle II and SuperKEKB are poised to become the world’s first Super B factory facility. Belle II aims to accumulate 50 times more data than its predecessor, Belle, and to seek out new physics hidden in subatomic particles that could shed light on mysteries of the early universe.
A 3D picture of the planned FASER detector as seen in the TI12 tunnel. The detector is precisely aligned with the collision axis in ATLAS, 480 m away from the collision point (Image: FASER/CERN)
“FASER is a neat physics proposal that addresses a particular aspect in the search for physics beyond the Standard Model and I am pleased to see it being implemented so efficiently,” adds Eckhard Elsen, CERN’s Director for Research and Computing.
While working at CERN, Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web.
“It is a great honour and a source of pride for CERN to host an event to mark the 30th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal for what would become the World Wide Web, and I am delighted that Sir Tim will be with us on the day,” said CERN Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti. "The Web's invention has transformed our world, and continues to show how fundamental research fuels innovation. CERN's culture of openness was a key factor in the Laboratory’s decision in 1993 to make the web available free to everybody, a key step in its development and subsequent spread.”
Figure 2: Schematic view of the detector system of the KOTO experiment. The neutral kaon beam enters from the left. The electromagnetic calorimeter in purple measures two gamma-rays from a neutral pion.
The KOTO collaboration set the upper limit of once in three hundred million on the rate of the neutral K-meson (kaon) decay into a neutral pi meson and a pair of neutrinos from the analysis of the data set collected in 2015, and improved the world’s best sensitivity by an order of magnitude.
Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General, and Blaženka Divjak, Minister of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia, signed an Agreement admitting Croatia as an Associate Member of CERN.
“It is a great pleasure to welcome Croatia into the CERN family as an Associate Member. Croatian scientists have made important contributions to a large variety of experiments at CERN for almost four decades and as an Associate Member, new opportunities open up for Croatia in scientific collaboration, technological development, education and training,” said Fabiola Gianotti.
A snapshot of a plasma channel’s electron density profile (blue) formed inside a sapphire tube (gray) with the combination of an electrical discharge and an 8-nanosecond laser pulse (red, orange, and yellow). This plasma channel was used to guide femtoseconds-long “driver” laser pulses from the BELLA petawatt laser system, which generated plasma waves and accelerated electrons to 8 billion electron volts in just 20 centimeters. (Credit: Gennadiy Bagdasarov/Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics; Anthony Gonsalves and Jean-Luc Vay/Berkeley Lab)
“In the future, multiple high-energy stages of electron acceleration could be coupled together to realize an electron-positron collider to explore fundamental physics with new precision,” said Eric Esarey, BELLA Center Director.
The BESIII detector finished accumulating a sample of 10 billion J/ψ events together with a continuum data sample on Feb. 11. The 10 billion J/ψ-event sample accumulated at BESIII is the world’s largest data sample produced directly from electron-positron annihilations.
The proposed layout of the future circular collider (Image: CERN)
“The FCC’s ultimate goal is to provide a 100-km superconducting proton accelerator ring, with an energy of up to 100 TeV, meaning an order of magnitude more powerful than the LHC”, said CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry. “The FCC timeline foresees starting with an electron-positron machine, just as LEP preceded the LHC. This would enable a rich programme to benefit the particle physics community throughout the twenty-first century.”
The National Science Foundation’s Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile houses the Dark Energy Camera. Photo: Fermilab
"Although the data-taking for DES is coming to an end, DECam will continue its exploration of the universe from the Blanco telescope and is expected remain a front-line engine of discovery for many years,” Heathcote said.
RHIC's STAR detector tracks the thousands of particles produced by each ion collision. It weighs 1,200 tons and is as large as a house.
Berndt Mueller, Brookhaven’s Associate Laboratory Director for Nuclear and Particle Physics, noted, “This 19th year of operations demonstrates once again how the RHIC team — both accelerator physicists and experimentalists — is continuing to explore innovative technologies and ways to stretch the physics capabilities of the most versatile particle accelerator in the world.”
-- Symmetry Magazine, Kathryn Jepsen
This year, October 31 was more than just Halloween. It was also the first global celebration of Dark Matter Day. In 25 countries, 11 US states and online, people interacted with scientists, watched demonstrations, viewed films, took in art exhibits and toured laboratories to learn about the ongoing search for dark matter.
Symmetry has collected a series of photos from participants around the world. Check out how people celebrated Dark Matter Day and download a commemorative dark matter poster (to be printed using visible matter).
This report distills the findings of a series of international peer reviews of the communications and outreach functions of large-scale multidisciplinary science laboratories around the world.