Today’s physics is “probably” not the kind of thing that you, or at least your parents and grandparents, learned about in school (unless you happen to be a Physicist). Even the most casual science buff knows that today it’s all about exotic stuff like dark matter (NASA), ghost particles (FermiLab) and “spooky action at a distance” (MIT).
There’s been a lot of developments on all of these fronts, so here are some intriguing updates from the cutting edge of physics.
Dark
One big story that made the news is that the Dark Energy Survey has released a new “Dark Matter Map of the Universe.” Of course, by definition, that’s pretty hard to do, but they did it.
New map of Universe’s dark matter (Pallab Ghosh, BBC News)
Standard model of the universe withstands most precise test by Dark Energy Survey (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)
DES Year 1 Cosmology Results: Papers (Dark Energy Survey)
Deep
The Dark Energy Survey used good old astronomy to find dark matter, but Motherboard did a fantastic feature on an underground science laboratory called SNOLAB that takes a very different approach to finding dark matter and pesky things like neutrinos.
SNOLAB Dark Matter Lab Buried Over a Mile Underground (Motherboard, YouTube)
The folks at Motherboard also did this 360° video that shows more background on their visit, literally and figuratively.
Exploring An Underground Dark Matter Lab in 360° (Motherboard, YouTube)
Ghostly
SNOLAB’s experiments try to find the “ghostly” neutrinos, but what are they? Here’s a quick, top level explanation.
MinutePhysics (YouTube Channel)
MinutePhysics (Facebook)
Here’s a bit more elaborate introduction to neutrinos by Fermilab’s Don Lincoln.
Fermilab (YouTube Channel)
Fermila (Official Website)
Here is a full length lecture by Arthur B. McDonald (Co-recipient of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that neutrinos have mass).
The Royal Institution (YouTube Channel)
The Royal Institution (Official Website)
Arthur B. McDonald and Takaaki Kajita, Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 (Nobel Prize Press Release)
Ghost Busters!
Scientists from University of Chicago’s Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics announced a new development in the search for the the elusive, ghostly neutrinos. The first link is to a video that provides an overview of what they did, and the second link to a video and accompanying story from the University of Chicago gives more background.
New Neutrino Experiment Seeks Dark Matter (Scripps News, YouTube)
UChicago Physicist Helps Create World’s Smallest Neutrino Detector (The University of Chicago, YouTube)
World’s smallest neutrino detector observes elusive interactions of particles (Steve Koppes, University of Chicago News)
Spooky
On a somewhat different front, scientists in China used a satellite to show that Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” really does happen!
Quantum Satellite Achieves ‘Spooky Action’ at Record Distance (Science Magazine, YouTube)
The Universe Is as Spooky as Einstein Thought (Natalie Wolchover, The Atlantic)
Satellite-based entanglement distribution over 1200 kilometers (Juan Yin, et. al., AAAS Science)
Cosmic Bell Test: Measurement Settings from Milky Way Stars (Johannes Handsteiner, et. al., Physical Review Letters)
Wow, and that’s just what’s been in the news lately — imagine all of the other stuff going on out there now!