For most of us, “string theory” and “supersymmetry” are vague but evocative terms that seem to point to a mysterious sub-reality underlying the world we know. For theoretical physicist Sylvester James Gates Jr., director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland, the fearsomely complex mathematics of string theory and supersymmetry are all in a day’s work. Gates is also a Distinguished University Professor, University System of Maryland Regents Professor and John S. Toll Professor of Physics, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He received the National Medal of Science from President Obama in 2013.(more…)
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…)
