Browsing Archive: September, 2017

Constraining the Seesaw

Posted by on Friday, September 29, 2017, In : Particle Physics

A few days ago I wrote a brief review of the Seesaw Model of particle physics. Being a theorist, I forgot to mention that the motivation for that review was a new set of results from the experimental community that constrains such models. And so I thought that today I would give a few details on these new results.

In the model I reviewed, known as a Type-I model, each of the species of neutrino that are part of the Standard Model are partnered with a second, very heavy neutrino that provides a...
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The Seesaw Model

Posted by on Tuesday, September 26, 2017, In : Particle Physics

Neutrinos are very mysterious particles. They do not carry electric or magnetic charge, and so they do not interact very much with anything else. In fact we are constantly being showered with neutrinos from space that fly straight through us without interaction, and in fact straight through the entire Earth without even being slowed down. They are so difficult to detect that the weak nuclear decays that generate them were at first thought to be violating energy and momentum conservation since...
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The End of Cassini

Posted by on Friday, September 15, 2017, In : Astronomy

After twenty years of studying the planet Saturn, the working life of the Cassini spacecraft will come to an end in the next few hours. On Friday, September 15, 2017 at about 7:55 am EDT, NASA will crash the probe into the surface of Saturn and end its mission.

As far back as the 1980s astronomers from around the world were making plans to send a probe to the gas giant, Saturn. We had already explored both Mars and Venus, and the Voyager probes had made flybys of the outer planets, but Saturn ...
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The HL-LHC

Posted by on Thursday, September 14, 2017, In : Particle Physics

As students around the world return to school, or start college, or begin new coursework and training of other kinds, particle physicists are also starting new things in the form of new data runs from the Large Hadron Collider. The LHC has already produced evidence of the Higgs boson, and added further constraints to many other theories of nature. The next data run could easily find evidence of dark matter, dark energy, or even hidden higher dimensions in the Universe.

However the topic of tod...
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Back To School

Posted by on Tuesday, September 5, 2017,

Some loyal readers will recognize this entry as a repeat from the last three years. Each year it gets a good response, and kudos from my readers, and so as before I must appease my loyal followers...

To all the students starting University, enjoy this time of your life. Long ago when I started, a prof told me that this is the start of your real education. Now you get to choose your own courses and your own field of study. It is entirely up to you to decide what to do with this chance.

I know fr...

Free Software

Posted by on Tuesday, September 5, 2017,

With the arrival of September, students around the world will be returning to classes this week. And for those who are starting out at college or university, one of the most important considerations is how to live on a budget. These are the years when one has little or no income, but must bear the expenses of living independently for the first time. While giving advice on living on a budget is far too expansive to cover in this blog, I can tackle one small aspect of student life by providing ...
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Dr. Christopher Bird