back to previous page
AN INTRINSIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MATTER AND ANTIMATTER? Understanding the tiny differences between the laws of physics for matter and for antimatter may yield important clues about why the Universe contains far more matter than antimatter. How did all the antimatter disappear?
February 14, 2001
MUON DATA CHALLENGES THE STANDARD MODEL. An experiment making an extremely precise measurement of the so-called anomalous magnetic moment of the muon has found a result that appears to point beyond the Standard Model.
December, 2000
HINTS OF THE MASS PARTICLE: THE HIGGS BOSON. The LEP accelerator at the CERN lab in Geneva, Switzerland has been switched off for the last time to make room for construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Just before shutdown, they saw intriguing events which may or may not be an indication for a Higgs boson with a mass of about 115 GeV. A Higgs boson is a particle which should play a critical role in our understanding of how particles get masses. The location of the search is now shifting to Fermilab's Tevatron Collider which will begin a 5-year run in March 2001. Fermilab will search for Higgs's as massive as 180 GeV.
July 20, 2000
TAU NEUTRINO DISCOVERED. The first direct evidence for the tau neutrino, the third kind of neutrino has been observed at Fermilab. They saw neutrinos hit a target and produce tau leptons.
April 27, 2000
UNIVERSE IN ITS INFANCY. The first detailed images reveal the structure that existed in the universe when it was a tiny fraction of its current age and 1,000 times smaller and hotter. The images from the BOOMERANG project are already shedding light on some of cosmology's outstanding mysteries -- the nature of the matter and energy that dominate intergalactic space and whether space is "curved" or "flat."
EXTRA DIMENSIONS? Extra spacetime dimensions might permit the physical forces to become unified at much lower energies. Why don't we see these dimensions?
June 30, 1999
PROGRESS ON UNDERSTANDING NEUTRINO OSCILLATIONS. In Japan, an accelerator and an underground detector 250 km away are teaming up to look for an exotic property of neutrinos.
June 21, 1999
THE ARROW OF TIME has been measured at CERN and Fermilab by measuring CP violation (CP is related to the slight asymmetry between matter and anti-matter).
INTRIGUING INDICATIONS OF CP VIOLATION IN B MESONS have turned up at Fermilab. CP is a symmetry that turns a particle into an antiparticle (charge conjugation, or C) and then sends the particle through a looking glass (parity reflection, or P).
December 19, 1998
A REPULSIVE FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE seems to be at work on a cosmic scale, at least partly neutralizing the attractive force of gravity.
1999 NOBEL PRIZE FOR PHYSICS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Physics to two Dutch physicists who created the mathematical foundations of the Standard Model of particle physics. The award went to:
Professor Gerardus 't Hooft, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Professor Emeritus Martinus J.G. Veltman, Bilthoven, the Netherlands.
The Academy stated: "The two researchers are being awarded the Nobel Prize for having placed particle physics theory on a firmer mathematical foundation. They have in particular shown how the theory may be used for precise calculations of physical quantities. Experiments at accelerator laboratories in Europe and the USA have recently confirmed many of the calculated results.
The Academy's citation: "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics."
Recommended reading:
