Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, is known to work well on scales smaller than an individual galaxy. For example, the orbits of the planets in our solar system and the motion of stars around […]
On 28 June, the US Department of Energy and the Italian Embassy, on behalf of the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, signed a collaboration agreement concerning the international Short Baseline Neutrino (SBN) programme […]
A scarf knitted from a single thread can be pulled to twice its length, even though the thread itself hardly elongates. Curious about the elastic behaviour of his first child’s baby clothes, physicist Frédéric Lechenault […]
The Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism solves the apparent theoretical impossibility of allowing weak vector bosons (the W and Z) to acquire mass. The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 via its decays into photons, Z and […]
Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean is famous for its huge statues, many of which have hat-like structures, or “pukao”, made from red scoria rock on their heads. How the multi-tonne pukao were moved and […]
Homer Neal 1942–2018 • Mike Pennington 1946–2018
During its closed session on 14 June, the CERN Council decided, by consensus, the venues and dates for two key meetings concerning the upcoming update of the European strategy for particle physics. An open symposium, […]
The LHC, the largest and most complex scientific instrument ever conceived, could not have been built without good organisation, innovative procurement and careful oversight. The same is true of the high-luminosity LHC upgrade.
IOP award winners for 2018 announced • Markov prize for Boos and Gorbunov • Young scientists Trnka and Gray win awards • Two researchers awarded CMS thesis honour • Filipino and Indian students win BL4S competition • Larry Gladney named dean of diversity at Yale • Science for development in Vietnam • Weighing options for better ion-therapy systems • SHiP collaboration meets in Russia • HEPTech exposes young researchers to the business world • CERN openlab goes to Europe’s premier computing event • PhD training programme for southeastern European students
A recent analysis of the cost and benefits of the high-luminosity LHC reveals a quantifiable return to society in terms of scientific, economic and cultural value.
On 28 June, 200 servers from the CERN computing centre were donated to Kathmandu University (KU) in Nepal. The equipment, which is no longer needed by CERN, will contribute towards a new high-performance computing facility […]
Despite tremendous efforts, the search for the constituents of dark matter has so far been unsuccessful. Interest is therefore growing in new experiments that probe dark-matter candidates such as axions and other very weakly interacting sub-eV particles.
Un neutrino détecté par IceCube nous aiguille sur l’origine des rayons cosmiques • Moment magnétique du muon : ça se précise • Les dates de la mise à jour de la stratégie ont été fixées • Première utilisation sur l’homme de l’imagerie 3D par rayons X en couleur • L’Italie et les États-Unis s’allient dans la quête des neutrinos stériles • Un geste pour stimuler l’informatique haute performance au Népal • ATLAS observe la désintégration du Higgs en quarks b • CMS s’aventure dans le noir • LHCb teste la cohérence interne du triangle de l’unitarité • Des mésons charmés pour mieux comprendre le plasma quarks-gluons • Le tricot sous toutes les coutures • La relativité réussit un test à l’échelle galactique
20 years since the discovery of neutrino oscillations, a complete understanding is within our grasp.
A ceremony at CERN on 15 June celebrated the start of civil-engineering works for the high-luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC). The upgrade will allow about 10 times more data to be accumulated by […]
Muons have been accelerated by a radio-frequency accelerator for the first time, in an experiment performed at the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) in Tokai, Japan. The work paves the way for a compact […]
On 2 May, the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia, US, celebrated the completion of the 12 GeV CEBAF upgrade project. The $338 million upgrade has tripled CEBAF’s original operating energy and will allow, among other […]
A new facility called the Higgs Centre for Innovation opened at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh on 25 May as part of the UK government’s efforts to boost productivity and innovation. The centre, named after Peter […]
On 28 May, the world’s largest and most sensitive detector for direct searches of dark matter in the form of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) released its latest results. XENON1T, a 3D-imaging liquid-xenon time projection […]
CERN’s radioactive ion-beam facility ISOLDE has stamped a new coin in its impressive collection. Long considered the domain of high-energy, in-flight rare-isotope facilities, chromium has now been produced at ISOLDE in prodigious quantities, thanks to […]
Bottomonium mesons, composed of beauty quark–antiquark pairs bound to each other through the strong force, play a special role in our understanding of hadron formation because the large quark mass allows important simplifications in the […]
Last year, the LHCb collaboration announced the first observation of the Ξcc++ baryon, a doubly charmed particle (CERN Courier July/August 2017 p8). It was identified via the decay Ξcc++ → Λc+ K–π+π+, with the Λc+ baryon subsequently […]
According to the Standard Model (SM), fermions acquire their mass through coupling to the Higgs field. New results released by the ATLAS collaboration firmly establish and measure these so-called Yukawa couplings to third-generation fermions. The […]
One of the key goals in exploring the properties of QCD matter is to determine the minimum value of the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio (η/s) for an ideal fluid. In heavy-ion collisions at […]
Rhinoviruses (RVs), far from being just a seasonal nuisance causing common colds, can also lead to serious complications in conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. The huge diversity of RVs precludes the development of […]
Quantum computing, which exploits quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition, is rapidly gaining ground. Now, Eugene Dumitrescu from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and colleagues have used quantum machines to calculate the binding […]
Conventional thinking has it that ice is slippery due to a thin film of liquid water created by actual melting or the pressure of objects such as skate blades. Using molecular dynamics simulations of the […]
The collective dynamics of fish schooling has traditionally been approached using simple behavioural rules, with little consideration of the flow of water induced by the fish. Audrey Filella of Aix-Marseille University in France and colleagues […]
Biohybrid robots, which are based on heart or skeletal muscle tissue formed on flexible substrates, have suffered from poor agility and durability owing to tissue shrinkage and loss of function. Now, taking a cue from […]
Artificial neural networks may get a huge boost from analogue memory. Much of the time and energy that goes into training such networks is due to the need to transfer weight data between conventional digital […]