Monthly Archives: November 2009

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

A Brilliant Darkness

Posted on November 14, 2009 by woit

Joao Magueijo has a new book out about Ettore Majorana, entitled A Brilliant Darkness. It’s a lot of fun to read, and could be described as an example of Gonzo history of science. While it contains a lot of factual … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews | 11 Comments

On the Defensive

Posted on November 13, 2009 by woit

There’s another article here about Michael Green succeeding Hawking as Lucasian chair. It emphasizes the idea that this is all about more funding for string theory: MICHAEL Green, the 18th holder of Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, is clearly … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 16 Comments

A Line on String Theory

Posted on November 12, 2009 by woit

According to the Harvard Gazette, it seems that string theory predicts a very distinctive experimental signature that should be easily observable at the LHC. The claim is that string theory predicts that the LHC should produce stau particles, with a … Continue reading →

Posted in This Week's Hype | 27 Comments

Witten on J Street

Posted on November 11, 2009 by woit

The latest New York Review of Books (December 3 issue, not yet online) contains an article by Edward Witten entitled “The New J-Lobby for Peace”. It’s about J Street, an organization set up last year to lobby in Washington in … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment