Monthly Archives: December 2009

Has Dark Matter Finally Been Detected?

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

No. The CDMS experiment today reported the observation of two events, with an expected background of .8 events (I gather this is a 1.5 sigma result, but there is no arXiv preprint yet). Based on this, the Guardian reports that … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 44 Comments

2010 LHC Schedule

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

The LHC shut down yesterday for an end-of-year break after a very successful initial period of beam commissioning at beam energies of 450 GeV and 1.18 TeV. Tomorrow at CERN there will be public reports about the state of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 6 Comments

Life in the Multiverse

Posted on December 17, 2009 by woit

The latest Scientific American features a cover story on Life in the Multiverse: Could the strange physics of other worlds breed life? The magazine earlier this year fired a third of its staff and replaced its editor (the new editor … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 4 Comments

String Theory and Heaven

Posted on December 16, 2009 by woit

I hadn’t heard much about Dinesh D’Souza since the Reagan era when for some mysterious reason his views were widely promoted in the media. He has continued since then to play the role (supposedly according to the New York Times … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on December 13, 2009 by woit

The proof of the fundamental lemma by Ngo has made it onto Time magazine’s list of the top ten scientific discoveries of 2009. Ngo will be visiting Columbia in the near future, and I might even end up understanding what … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments

News From the LHC

Posted on December 8, 2009 by woit

Just saw this from Tommaso Dorigo, which made me realize that I should get to work and write a blog posting before the CERN press office people wake up. The big news today is that the first collisions at a … Continue reading →

Posted in Experimental HEP News | 9 Comments

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