15 October 2009

No, really, the LHC might be under attack by particles from the future

The idea that the Higgs boson is traveling backwards in time to derail its own discovery has been featured lately in the New York Times, among other places, but it sounds like scientists are just making stuff up for why the LHC isn't working yet.

Here's an intelligible explanation that completely blew my mind.

12 October 2009

Interim Update

I have been pretty busy lately and at a loss for what to write, as will be explained below. My girlfriend visited recently, and we had a great time. She wrote a little about what we did here so feel free to go check out our trip to Vienna - my first trip outside Krakow that was not related to work!

Science-wise, I am super busy editing a report about the current work of the FCAL collaboration for a review committee. It has been my intention for some time to give a good explanation of the role of my particular detector, but I've refrained from doing this for two reasons. The first is that editing the report and reading the work of others, who work on detectors that perform similar or complimentary roles, has helped me gain a better understanding of how my detector fits into the big picture. The second reason is that LumiCal isn't a particularly glamorous detector - it won't be detecting new particles or extra dimensions. Instead it plays more of a "background" role, so trying to make it interesting and relevant to people is a bit of a challenge. I promise I'll give it my best shot.