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What’s Happening with the Higgs Boson

By Guest PostJune 28, 2012Scienceantibottom quark, atlas, beate heinemann, CERN, cms, dark matter, data reduction, electron volts, electrons, extra dimension, fermions, gamma rays, geneva, higgs, higgs boson, higgs field, ian hinchliffe, inner detector, Large Hadron Collider, lhc, miniature black holes, murdock gil gilchriese, nuclear research, particles of matter, photon channel, photons, prediction, quarks, Space, specific masses, standard model, supersymmetry, switzerland, tau particles, w bosons

Berkeley Lab scientists, major contributors to the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, explain what the excitement is about

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, will hold a seminar early in the morning on July 4 to announce the latest results from ATLAS and CMS, two major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that are searching for the Higgs boson. Both experimental teams are working down to the wire to finish analyzing their data, and to determine exactly what can be said about what they’ve found.

“We do not yet know what will be shown on July 4th,” says Ian Hinchliffe, a theoretical physicist in the Physics Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), who heads the Lab’s participation in the ATLAS experiment. “I have seen many conjectures on the blogs about what will be shown: these are idle speculation. Things are moving very fast this week, and it’s an exciting time at CERN. Many years of hard work are coming to fruition.” (more…)

The Search for Dark Matter Goes Deeper Underground

By Guest PostMay 28, 2012Scienceblack hills, cherenkov radiation, dark matter, gravitational effects, liquid xenon, neutrino collisions, titanium tank, underground xenon detector

With LUX ZEPLIN Berkeley Lab researchers seek to increase the sensitivity of LUX, the most sensitive search for dark matter yet, by orders of magnitude

Although it’s invisible, dark matter accounts for at least 80 percent of the matter in the universe. No one knows what it is, but most scientists would bet on weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs. (more…)

Planck All-Sky Images Show Cold Gas and Strange Haze

By Guest PostFebruary 14, 2012Sciencebig bang, carbon monoxide, clouds of hydrogen, cold clouds, cold gas, cosmic microwave background, dark matter, dark matter particles, davide pietrobon, electrons, european space agency, form of light energy, galactic haze, galactic winds, Galaxy, greg dobler, haze, images, jan tauber, krzysztof m gorski, magnetic fields, microwave emissions, milky way galaxy, NASA, planck, planck data, poland, relic radiation, santa barbara, star formation, supernovae, the whole sky, universe, university of california, warsaw university observatory, wavelengths, wmap

New images from the Planck mission show previously undiscovered islands of star formation and a mysterious haze of microwave emissions in our Milky Way galaxy. The views give scientists new treasures to mine and take them closer to understanding the secrets of our galaxy.

Planck is a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation. (more…)

Physicists Set Strongest Limit on Mass of Dark Matter

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2011Sciencedark energy, dark matter, dark matter collisions, dark matter particle, detecting dark matter, expansion of universe, mass

Brown University physicists have set the strongest limit for the mass of dark matter, the mysterious particles believed to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter must have a mass greater than 40 giga-electron volts. The distinction is important because it casts doubt on recent results from underground experiments that have reported detecting dark matter

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — If dark matter exists in the universe, scientists now have set the strongest limit to date on its mass. (more…)

NASA Telescope Helps Confirm Nature of Dark Energy

By Guest PostMay 20, 2011Science3 d map, albert einstein, anglo australian telescope, australia, big bang, caltech, chris blake, christopher martin, constant force, cosmic time, dark energy, dark matter, galaxies, galaxy evolution explorer, gravitational attractions, gravity, how dark energy works, jon morse, melbourne, NASA, siding spring mountain, swinburne university of technology, universe

PASADENA, Calif. — A five-year survey of 200,000 galaxies, stretching back seven billion years in cosmic time, has led to one of the best independent confirmations that dark energy is driving our universe apart at accelerating speeds. The survey used data from NASA’s space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer and the Anglo-Australian Telescope on Siding Spring Mountain in Australia.

The findings offer new support for the favored theory of how dark energy works — as a constant force, uniformly affecting the universe and propelling its runaway expansion. They contradict an alternate theory, where gravity, not dark energy, is the force pushing space apart. According to this alternate theory, with which the new survey results are not consistent, Albert Einstein’s concept of gravity is wrong, and gravity becomes repulsive instead of attractive when acting at great distances. (more…)

Search for Dark Matter Narrowed by New Data From XENON100

By Guest PostApril 16, 2011Sciencebackground radiation, bombarding earth, cosmological observations, dark energy, dark matter, Germany, gran sasso national laboratory, mysterious dark matter, Netherlands, particle physics, particles, universe, weakly interacting massive particles, wimps, xenon collaboration, xenon100 experiment

*Collaboration reveals results from 100-day experiment*

Today, scientists from the XENON collaboration announced the result from their search for the elusive component of our universe known as dark matter. After analyzing one hundred days of data taken with the XENON100 experiment, they see no evidence for the existence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the leading candidates for the mysterious dark matter. The XENON100 experiment is operated deep underground at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the Italian National Institute for Physics (INFN). (more…)

Herschel Measures Dark Matter for Star-Forming Galaxies

By Guest PostFebruary 21, 2011Sciencealexandre amblard, asantha cooray, astronomers, dark matter, distant galaxies, european space agency, exotic substance, Galaxy, herschel, herschel space observatory, jamie bock, longer wavelength infrared light, massive galaxies, Milky Way, Nature, star forming galaxies, stars, telescope, universe, william danchi

PASADENA, Calif. — The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed how much dark matter it takes to form a new galaxy bursting with stars. Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission supported with important NASA contributions.

The findings are a key step in understanding how dark matter, an invisible substance permeating our universe, contributed to the birth of massive galaxies in the early universe. (more…)

Discovery Triples Number of Stars in the Universe

By Guest PostDecember 2, 2010Scienceastronomers, charlie conroy, dark matter, dim stars, earths, elliptical galaxies, evolution, galaxies, galaxy formation, gliese 581, hawaii, keck observatory, Milky Way, optical telescopes, pieter van dokkum, red dwarfs, sun, theoretical models, twin telescopes

Astronomers detected the faint signature of small, dim red dwarf stars in nearby galaxies (right), and found they are much more numerous than in our own Milky Way (left). Image credit: Patrick Lynch/Yale University

Astronomers have discovered that small, dim stars known as red dwarfs are much more prolific than previously thought — so much so that the total number of stars in the universe is likely three times bigger than previously believed.

Because red dwarfs are relatively small and dim compared to stars like our Sun, astronomers hadn’t been able to detect them in galaxies other than our own Milky Way and its nearest neighbors before now. Therefore, they did not know how much of the total stellar population of the universe is made up of red dwarfs.

Now astronomers have used powerful instruments on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to detect the faint signature of red dwarfs in eight massive, relatively nearby galaxies called elliptical galaxies, which are located between about 50 million and 300 million light years away. They discovered that the red dwarfs, which are only between 10% and 20% as massive as the Sun, were much more bountiful than expected. (more…)

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