The Electron Ion Collider (EIC) is a planned future electron microscope that will give a new picture of the interior of sub-atomic particles by smashing a beam of electrons into a beam of protons or heavy ions.
Our planet is being bombarded with particles coming from outer space. Before particle accelerators were invented, these cosmic rays were the only source of high-energy particles. Today the highest energy particles from space still make those from the biggest particle accelerator on Earth look feeble.
Particle colliders are the favourite tools of particle physicists. While there are plenty of other ways to study the fundamental building blocks of the universe, nothing quite beats getting two beams moving at close to the speed of light, then letting them smash together.
Oxford particle physicists are involved with experiments exploring the nature of one of the most mysterious known particles using experiments shooting beams for hundreds of kilometres straight through the Earth.
Why is the universe we see made from matter, when we always see particles and antiparticles created together? The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, which should have then annihilated to leave a universe full of radiation, but devoid of stars, planets and physicists.
Don’t dismiss the redefinition of the kilogram as a bureaucratic footnote. It is a story of pioneering precision instrumentation to complete a scientific mission that began during the French revolution.
Muon cameras, SQUIDs, dark matter, underground rivers, earthquakes, lightning and gravitational waves. A few highlights from the iDUST 2018 meeting on interdisciplinary underground science, held 4-5 June in Avignon, France.
Since the USS strike, back in March, the Oxford branch of the University and College Union has seen big changes. There have been victories, but the fight continues as we have not yet had a satisfactory promise that our pensions will not be cut. This post is an update on what has been happening. At the start of the strike, I remarked that we were learning how to strike as we went along. Industrial action on this scale was new to Oxford. We have learnt a lot. Yet the learning is an ongoing process.
ShowScience is an annual conference in which the groups which make up the international EuroScienceFun network get together to share science communication tricks, with a focus on things like fireworks, liquid nitrogen, and explosions. This year I decided to go along and see what I could learn.
What took place this week when the senior management of Oxford University attempted to block a vote on the proposed pension reform in the university’s governing body.
For the last two weeks, British universities have been in the grip of a strike called by the University and College Union (UCU) in protest at planned reform of the universities pension scheme. Industrial action on this scale is a new thing for us and it is causing some confusion in Oxford, where despite widespread support, and growing anger, among lecturers, no one seem to be clear about how we should be striking. But we are learning fast. This is a view from the picket line.
High energy alien particles hit the sky above us every minute. We can’t see them, but they can be detected by exploiting an interesting bit of physics: the Cherenkov light produced as they zip through a medium faster than the speed of light.
The art of tracking particles is literally at the heart of the big LHC detectors. It is an enormously complicated 3-dimensional join-the-dots exercise. This challenge requires advanced software, developed by teams of programmers over many years. This is a story of how I figured it out one summer.
One of the most memorable lectures I have attended was by Joseph Rotblat, anti-nuclear campaigner, and the only scientist to quit the Manhattan Project on moral grounds. He explained the flaw in the concept of a nuclear deterrent was the assumption that you were dealing with a sane adversary. This came back to me as I read recent accounts of President Donald Trump.
A look at the work of seventeenth century gadgeteer Robert Hooke.
Particle Physics Gadgeteering 