2020 APS March Meeting Cancelled

By now, I'm sure those of you involved would have heard the news of the cancellation of the APS March meeting this year due to the coronavirus issue. For those of you who don't know, the APS March meeting is the LARGEST yearly physics conference in the world, attracting more than 10,000 physicists from around the world over a week of intellectual discussion and presentations.

This cancellation is quite unprecedented, because I do not remember the last time this has happened, if it has ever happened. So this is quite a big deal. I'm sure there's a lot of people impacted by this, especially in terms of travel and accommodation cancellations and fees.

No news yet on what will happen to the APS April meeting, which is looming in the very near future.

If you are affected by it, I'd like to hear it. Luckily (or unluckily), I wasn't going this year, so I don't have to deal with the mess.

Zz.

APS's Don't Drink And Derive T-Shirt

I was cleaning my closet (I do that now and then) and came across this old shirt from way back when. This was bought during the 1999 APS March Meeting in Atlanta, GA, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the APS.

When I first saw it, I said to the person at the counter that all the formulae are wrong. And then, duh, it suddenly hit me why and I got it. So of course, I had to buy it.

I haven't worn it in ages, because of a small tear on the front. But I'll probably start wearing it around the house, especially if I'm working on the yard.

This t-shirt is the opposite of the one I bought while I was at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. That t-shirt had all the correct formulae and shows my nerdy self whenever I wear it.

😁

Zz.

Forum with Congressman and Physicist Bill Foster

This is the talk given by Congressman and the only Physicist left in the US Congress, Bill Foster, at this year's APS March meeting.



I have been in attendance to one of Bill Foster's talk before, at the 2011 TIPP conference in Chicago. You may read my "live" reporting of that talk back then, and also a follow-up post on it.

Zz.

Presidential Executive Order and US Conferences

With the two big conferences looming this year, the APS March and April Meetings, it will be interesting to hear how the recent presidential executive order banning entry by visitors from 7 predominantly-Muslim countries will have affect. Citizens from countries such as Iran already had a long and arduous process in gaining a visitor visa to come to the US, so much so that many won't even bother to try.

So now, with the entry ban, looks like this will have an impact on visiting scientists from these affected countries. Unfortunately, this will create an even bigger ramification, because international organizations will be less inclined to hold major conferences in the US where some of its members will not be allowed to attend. This should have both scientific and economic impacts.

So far, there has been no official word from the APS on this matter.

Zz.

Recap of ICHEP 2016

If you missed the recent brouhaha about the missing 750 GeV bump, here is the recap of ICHEP conference held recently in Chicago.

Zz.

The 750-GeV Blip At LHC - It Came And Went

A lot of HEP were in a tizzy since last year over the unexpected peak in the data at 750 GeV. And now, early reports from the current meeting going on in Chicago are indicating that this might be just a statistical anomaly.

Sadly, it seems that the 750 GeV particle wasn’t meant to be. Physicists at the International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Chicago were due to reveal the latest data on the excess of photon pairs at 750 GeV later today, but a paper accidentally posted online last night by the CMS collaboration states that their new round of data found no extra photons. This suggests the earlier hints were just a statistical fluke.

“As data comes in, excesses tend to come and go,” says CMS researcher Nadja Strobbe at Fermilab, near Batavia, Illinois. Researchers from ATLAS are due to present their results later today, but rumours suggest they will announce that the 750 GeV bump is gone.

But the fun part is all the theory papers that came gushing out as soon as the possibility of this being real.

A week after the announcement, theorists had written over 100 possible explanations; today, there are over 500. Nearly all of these papers posit the existence of a particle with a mass of 750 GeV or higher whose decay created the extra photons. Because this particle would have been outside the standard model of particle physics, it could have forced a reconsideration of how particles and forces interact.

I've always been curious to ask many of the people who did similar things on what they have to say for themselves. They had just created an explanation for the existence of the unicorn.

This is not new. When the OPERA collaboration indicated a faster-than-light neutrino detection a few years ago, numerous theory papers came out for that as well, proposing a myriad of particles and new physics. This is all before this result was confirmed. And of course, we all know what happened with that one as well.

I guess that people would rather be FIRST to be correct rather than be cautious and not appear foolish. After all, how many of us would remember that such-and-such wrote a paper to explain something that never existed in the first place?

Zz.

In Praise Of APS March Meeting

The APS March Meeting is the LARGEST yearly gathering of physicists in the world. Yet, as Chad Orzel has stated, it is hardly covered by the media.

In this article, Orzel writes why this is so, and why the media and the public should pay more attention to this gathering.

As with lots of things, though, the primary reason for the difference is probably money. Which, in a way, goes back to the irony noted above. Particle physics as a discipline puts a lot more effort into popularization because they have to in order to get funding. Fundamental physics experiments produce some spin-off benefits, but those are second-order effects, difficult to predict and harder to monetize.

Condensed matter research, on the other hand, leads to a more direct payoff, and thus comes with a more secure funding stream. You don’t have to work all that hard to convince wealthy industrialists that it’s worthwhile to spend money on developing new materials that will lead to new and improved commercial products. The funding stream for the field is a little more secure, thanks to the more direct path to applications, and thus there’s less need to make the effort to explain a complicated subject. Which then feeds back into the first two reasons.

This is kind of a shame, because when you dig into it, a lot of what goes on in condensed matter is just as amazing as what you see in particle physics. In fact, a lot of effort goes into creating analogues of exotic systems. And if you look at it the right way, there’s some quantum magic in the most basic aspects of the ways solid objects come together.

Certainly, the sexiness of the topic makes a big difference. But as I've stated many times on here, physics isn't just the LHC and the Big Bang. It is also your iPhone and your MRI. And it is about time the public is more aware of this.

Zz.

Physics In Health And Industry

I always try to show people that many of the stuff they now use, came out of the research work that had almost no apparent and immediate practical application. I often use high energy physics as an example, because in many camps, this is the poster child of esoteric physics that has no clear applications. Yet, people forget that the World Wide Web, the medical detector and diagnostics, and many others, came about as direct spin-offs of experiments in high energy physics.

This report of a recent conference on advanced radiation detectors will reinforce this point.

The first afternoon was rounded up by Colin Latimer of the University of Belfast and member of the EPS Executive Committee. He illustrated the varying timescales between invention and mass-application multi-billion-dollar markets, with a number of example technologies including optical fibres (1928), liquid-crystal displays (1936), magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) scanners (1945) and lasers (1958), with high-temperature superconductors (1986) and graphene (2004) still waiting to make a major impact. Latimer went on to present results from the recent study commissioned by the EPS from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which has shown the importance of physics to the European economy.
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Erik Heijne, a pioneer of silicon and silicon-pixel detectors at CERN, started by discussing innovation in instrumentation through the use of microelectronics technology. Miniaturization to sub-micron silicon technologies allows many functions to be compacted into a small volume. This has led in turn to the integration of sensors and processing electronics in powerful devices, and has opened up new fields of applications (CERN Courier March 2014 p26). In high-energy particle physics, the new experiments at the LHC have been based on sophisticated chips that allow unprecedented event rates of up to 40 MHz. Some of the chips – or at least the underlying ideas – have found applications in materials analysis, medical imaging and other types of industrial equipment. The radiation imaging matrix, for example, based on silicon-pixel and integrated read-out chips, has many applications already.

Without the effort and the need to push the capabilities of these detectors, there would be no reason to innovate, and the pace of advancement in many of these detectors will slow down considerably. The need to make better detectors to do high energy physics experiments DRIVES innovation in these various areas that have a clear and direct spin-offs into practical applications.

This is the part that many, including politicians, seem to not be aware of.

Zz.

Snapshot of 2014 APS March Meeting

If you didn't get to attend this year's APS March Meeting, or didn't get to the highlights they listed here, APS Physics has a summary of 4 of the major presentations at the recently-ended meeting. They range from "no-photon laser" to hyperbolic metamaterial.

Don't miss it.

Zz.

APS April Meeting Plenary Session Videos

In case you didn't attent this year's APS April meeting, the plenary session videos are online.

http://www.aps.org/meetings/april/events/plenary.cfm

Zz.

Just The Higgs And Nothing Beyond

The Kyoto conference going on now gets to see more results out of the ATLASand CMS detector at the LHC. So far, they are confirming the data of the apparent Higgs from last year, but nothing much beyond that.

Alas, most of the Higgs results being presented this week at the Hadron Collider Physics symposium in Kyoto, Japan, have been well within our standard understanding. Physicists at ATLAS and CMS, the two largest particle detectors at the LHC, have about double the amount of data they did in July; this new data hasn’t dramatically changed the tentative conclusion that the LHC is seeing a plain-old Standard Model Higgs.

We already heard on the other result that still showed no sign of SUSY. That Standard Model is gripping us real tightly!

Zz

Frank Wilczek's "A Long View Of Particle Physics"

{Don't miss our nomination period to nominate your most attractive physicists}

This is probably either an excerpt, or the text of a talk given by Frank Wilczek at last year's Solvay Conference.

Abstract: 2011 marked the hundredth anniversary both of the famous Solvay conferences, and of the Geiger-Marsden experiment that launched the modern understanding of subatomic structure. I was asked to survey the status and prospects of particle physics for the anniversary Solvay conference, with appropriate perspective. This is my attempt.

It's a surprisingly short paper, considering the title, which means it is short on details. Still, it might be an informative read for some people.

Zz.

Discovery of Majorana Fermions?

The big news so far coming out of the APS March Meeting going on right now is the result from the Leo Kouwenhoven group at Delft University. They reported on their latest experiment that, in some circles, shows compelling evidence for Majorana fermions.

Kouwenhoven’s apparatus is along the latter lines. In his group’s set-up, indium antimonide nanowires are connected to a circuit with a gold contact at one end and a slice of superconductor at the other, and then exposed to a moderately strong magnetic field. Measurements of the electrical conductance of the nanowires showed a peak at zero voltage that is consistent with the formation of a pair of Majorana particles, one at either end of the region of the nanowire in contact with the superconductor. As a sanity check, the group varied the orientation of the magnetic field and checked that the peak came and went as would be expected for Majorana fermions.

If this is true and verified, my earlier bet that Majorana fermions would probably be discovered in a condensed matter system first ahead of high energy physics experiments has come true! :)

In any case, this is an astounding experiment and an amazing accomplishment. I will eagerly anticipate reading the publication of this work.

Zz.

Cold Fusion Colloquium At CERN

At CERN, you asked? Yes, CERN, the same place that houses this little facility known at the LHC.

Not sure what to make of this, but a colloquium is being organized at CERN to look into the theoretical and "experimental" progress in Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR), or what we used to call cold fusion.

An overview will be given on the main progress made –since March 1989- through experimental/theoretical studies on thermal/nuclear anomalies observed in forced interactions of Hydrogen isotopes (H, D), in non-equilibrium conditions, with pure or alloyed materials (mainly Palladium, Nickel).

Most of the experiments used electrolytic environments at moderate temperatures (20-50°C). More recently, gas environments have been used at higher temperatures (between 200-400°C and even temperatures between 500-900°C have been employed).

Specific nanostructures have begun to play a crucial role both in basic studies as well as in, recently claimed, technological/industrial applications.

A plethora of theoretical models have been proposed to explain several experimental anomalies in LENR. A brief description of a weak interaction model shall be presented that claims to explain almost ALL of the anomalous effects found so far.

There's even going to be a live webcast of the event!

This will be interesting, especially the cast of characters that will attend or invited to attend this colloquium. I am also curious at what the outcome of it will be. Presumably, this phenomenon will be looked at carefully where the emphasis is purely on the physics.

Zz.

The Student's Apparatus That Shut Down Omaha's Airport

Remember earlier this month on the incident whereby a student returning from a conference shut down the Omaha, Nebraska airport due the suspicious nature of the demo apparatus that the student has in the luggage? We now have more details on what it was.

The physics apparatus works similarly, but instead of sampling a person's blood (via their finger), the LEDs measure the light absorbed by two different liquids. First, the experiment calls for a green LED to be shone through a small, clear container filled with a chemical indicator called bromothymol blue. The bromothymol blue represents oxygenated hemoglobin.

A voltmeter or multimeter measures the change in intensity of the light. Then, another liquid, an acid solution representing deoxygenated hemoglobin, is measured. The bromothymol blue should absorb more of the green light than the acid solution. The test is repeated for both liquids using a red LED. The experiment mimics how a pulse oximeter measures the oxygen saturation in a person's blood.

From the photo, I can see why someone might mistaken it for a homemade explosive device. So kids, let this be a lesson. Before you bring some physics items with you onto a plane, look at it. I mean, REALLY LOOK AT IT! You could cause a lot of grief to other people.

Zz.

Physics And The Peril Of Airline Flights

This was bound to happen, and something I fully expected.

This report gives an account of an amusing (at least for those of us not delayed by such a thing) incident at the Omaha, Nebraska airport. It seems that a student's demonstration equipment became a suspicious item and caused the airport security to go on high alert.

According to an article from the Omaha World-Herald, the Omaha Police Department's bomb squad was called to the airport's Terminal B just before noon on Wednesday to attend to a "suspicious-looking item" in a carry-on bag. Screening was halted and the B concourse was evacuated, the World-Herald said, though operations in the airport's other terminal remained unaffected.

The newspaper reported that, according to an FBI spokesperson, an Oregon college student's science project was the culprit. The student had been at the AAPT meeting and had submitted his or her project in the meeting's apparatus competition. After about two hours the suspicious items were deemed safe and the airport was cleared, but nine flights were delayed as a result.

Honestly, I'm not surprised by this. I've had many occasions where I could have brought along several equipments with me onto the plane, and I chose not to. Things such as photomultiplier tubes, multimeter, vacuum components, etc.. etc. may not look at ominous to those of us who know what it is. But to those who don't, they could easily trigger as a "suspicious items", since they are not really a common items that they encounter. So yes, in all of these cases, I always had them shipped, rather than bringing them with me either in my carry-on or checked luggage. The last thing I want is for something exactly like this to happen. It may not cause any legal implications, but man, it causes a lot of headaches, delayed flights, and very annoyed people.

Zz.

Physics Central At Comic-Con

The folks at Physics Central were at Comic-Con last week and passing out physic comic books to the attendees.

Looks like they had fun, and a long and tiring outing. I'm guessing that what they handed out was their publication on Spectra comic books, which you can download from their site.

Zz.

Weak Hints Of The Higgs

Finally, after years of results where large energy range are excluded for the Higgs, we are starting to get hints of the Higgs signature, and it came out of ATLAS and CMS at the LHC. Both were reported at this week's EPS meeting.

Both experiments found excesses in the 130-150 GeV mass region. But the excesses did not have enough statistical significance to count as evidence of the Higgs.

Scientists measure statistical significance in units called sigma, written as the Greek letter σ. These high-energy experiments usually require 3σ  level of confidence, about 99.7 percent certainty, to claim they’ve seen evidence of something. They need 5σ to claim a discovery. The ATLAS experiment reported excesses at confidence levels between 2 and 2.8σ, and the CMS experiment found similar excesses at close to 3σ.

Still, there's a very long way to go (and more data collection and analysis) before one can actually claim discovery. Unlike pseudosciences where even a weak correlation seems to be sufficient to claim that a phenomenon exists, in high energy physics, not only do you need a high confidence level that your result isn't simply due to chance, but you also need another independent detector, measuring things differently, to agree with your result! The fact that both ATLAS and CMS are getting almost the identical result is a very good start. And it is only a start.

Interestingly enough, the energy range where this is detected is also accessible at the Tevatron. I wonder if CDF and DZero might zero in (no pun intended) in this range and see what their data looks like with various background subtraction schemes.

Zz.

Movie Warning Should Be At Every Physics Conference

Here's the thing. Physicists in general are thoughtful, courteous people. Yet, at time, some of them can be downright rude.

When you go to a movie nowadays, especially in the US, before the start of the main feature, you will see a sign imploring you to either turn off your cell phones/electronic devices, or put them into silent mode. I think we will have to do this at every conference, especially physics conferences and lectures. I lost count how many times cell phones went off at the past TIPP conference, and in many cases, it is in the same lecture/talk! One would think that after the first one went off, considering the disruption (and embarrassment to the person involved), everyone would check their cell phones if they forgot to silent it. But nooooooo! A few minutes later, another one went off, and another! What gives??!!

Let's get this out of the way: IT IS UTTERLY INCONSIDERATE TO THE SPEAKER AND THOSE AROUND YOU WHEN YOUR CELL PHONES GO OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TALK!

Please don't perpetuate the stereotypical image of scientists/engineers being socially inept! Be considerate and turn off those damn cell phones during a talk! If you are THAT important, then don't attend!

Of course, I do remember going to a seminar once when the speaker's cell phone went off in the middle of his presentation. When that happens, all you can do is shake your head and move on.

Zz.

"What Life Is Like As A Scientist In Congress"

Bill Foster is up for this talk at TIPP Conference.

He shows video introduction of himself by Barack Obama during his last run at congressional office.

He shows his timeline: Businessman, then physicist, then politicians.

Shows his business beginnings, and his work towards his PhD. He mainly work at the CDF as a physicist. Shows photo of CDF central tracking chamber. He goes on to show several of the stuff he worked on while at Fermilab.

Why did he go into politics?

His excuse was that it is in his genes.

He describes life as a congressman - not glamorous. He shows pictures of his efficiency apartment while in Washington DC.

His pleasant surprise : "I actually do like people!"

"Our economy had many of the properties of an oscillating analog circuit"

"There are no controlled experiments in politics" - no way we can check what would happen without such-and-such being done.

He shows example of negative feedback loop in the housing market bubble.

It was a fascinating talk, and how politicians simply don't quite grasp quantitative versus qualitative information.

Zz.