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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015 recognises Takaaki Kajita in Japan and Arthur B. McDonald in Canada, for their key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.
Around the turn of the millennium, Takaaki Kajita presented the discovery that neutrinos from the atmosphere switch between two identities on their way to the Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.
Meanwhile, the research group in Canada led by Arthur B. McDonald could demonstrate that the neutrinos from the Sun were not disappearing on their way to Earth. Instead they were captured with a different identity when arriving to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.
A neutrino puzzle that physicists had wrestled with for decades had been resolved. Compared to theoretical calculations of the number of neutrinos, up to two thirds of the neutrinos were missing in measurements performed on Earth. Now, the two experiments discovered that the neutrinos had changed identities.
For particle physics this was a historic discovery. Its Standard Model of the innermost workings of matter had been incredibly successful, having resisted all experimental challenges for more than twenty years. However, as it requires neutrinos to be massless, the new observations had clearly showed that the Standard Model cannot be the complete theory of the fundamental constituents of the universe.
Now the experiments continue and intense activity is underway worldwide in order to capture neutrinos and examine their properties.
Information from:
"The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 6 Oct 2015.
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 2015
The international collaboration of the LHCb experiment, in which participate the Institute for Cosmos Sciences of University of Barcelona, the Ramon Llull university, the Santiago de Compostela University and the Institute for Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-UV), published on 27th of July in Nature journal the first barionic measurement of the quark coupling strength |Vub|.
This parameter is part of the "CKM" matrix. A matrix which governs the decays among the three families of elemental particles that exist and whose values are not predicted by the Standard Model. Concretely, the parameter |Vub| stands for the probability of a quark b (beauty) decaying to a quark up and a boson W (a weak interaction mediator).
For the first time researchers have been able to measure this parameter for baryons, particles formed by 3 quarks, instead of mesons (quark and antiquark). Since the difference on the measurement of |Vub| between mesons and baryons is an extra "spectator" quark in the case of baryons, the result was expected to be pretty similar in both cases. As Eugeni Graugès from ICCUB states " The outcome confirms our expectations considering the fact that both results for mesons and baryons are almost equal".
However, the measurement of |Vub| for baryons at LHCb contributes to a remaining question. The results found up to date reinforce the idea that in nature are favoured the decays of particles whose spin turns counterwise. However different kinds of measurements still show discrepances and will have to be analysed in more detail in order to understand to a better level elemental interactions.
More information:
“Determination of the quark coupling strength |Vub| using baryonic decays”,
arXiv:1504.01568v1
Contact of spanish groups at LHCb:
Eugeni Graugés. Grupo LHCb en la Universidad de Barcelona.
grauges@ecm.ub.edu // 93 403 91 90
Juan Saborido. Responsable grupo LHCb Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
juan.saborido@usc.es // 881 81 41 09 // 629 96 60 03
Arantza Oyanguren. Investigadora del Instituto de Física Corpuscular en LHCb.
Arantza.Oyanguren@ific.uv.es // 96 354 35 37 // 696 45 77 12
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A fundamental parameter for baryon Physics measured for the
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is at Pluto.
After a decade-long journey through our solar system, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto on Tuesday. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft phoned home just before 9 p.m. EDT to tell the mission team and the world it had accomplished the historic first-ever flyby of Pluto. It is the first space mission to explore a world so far from Earth from such a short distance, about 7,750 miles above the surface (roughly the same distance from New York to Mumbai, India).
New Horizons’ flyby of the dwarf planet and its five known moons is providing an up-close introduction to the solar system's Kuiper Belt, an outer region populated by icy objects ranging in size from boulders to dwarf planets. Kuiper Belt objects, such as Pluto, preserve evidence about the early formation of the solar system.
By the moment, New Horizons is collecting so much data that it will take 16 months to send it all back to Earth. A little bit more waiting for a 10 year's worth mission anyway.
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NASA's New Horizons "Phones Home" Safe after Pluto Flyby
The LHCb experiment from LHC at CERN has reported today the discovery of a new particle known as "pentaquark". A paper has been sent to the scientific journal Physical Review Letters on behalf of the international collaboration composed by researchers from University of Barcelona (UB), University "Ramón Llull" (URL), the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), and the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC,CSIC-UV).
To Eugeni Graugés from ICCUB, "this result is important in order to validate quantum chromodynamical (QCD) models since it confirms the existence of bounded states with a content of five quarks. It is as if a meson (2 quarks) and a baryon (3 quarks) could form a bounded state. It is similar to atoms forming molecules".
Eventhough QCD theoretical models allowed for the presence of particles formed by four quarks and an antiquark (currently named pentaquarks), it has not been until the date that contundent evidences of their existence could be provided.
The next step of the research is to determine which are the mechanisms that make the quarks to be united. Scientists are considering on one hand the action of strong forces between quarks, and on the other hand the possibility of weak interactions being the responsible of producing a kind of "meson-baryon" molecules.
More studies will need to be conducted in order to discriminate between the two possibilities. Researchers expect to achieve rellevant progress in this direction through the data compiled by LHCb during the second run of the LCH.
More information and contact:
Eugeni Graugés. Grupo LHCb en la Universidad de Barcelona.
grauges@ecm.ub.edu // 93 403 91 90
Juan Saborido. Responsable grupo LHCb Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.
juan.saborido@usc.es // 881 81 41 09 // 629 96 60 03
Fernando Martínez Vidal. Grupo LHCb en el Instituto de Física Corpuscular.
fernando.martinez@ific.uv.es // 96 354 35 39 // 675 23 92 55
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A pentaquark is observed at LHCb experiment at CERN
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started delivering physics data today for the first time in 27 months. After an almost two year shutdown and several months recommissioning, the LHC is now providing collisions to all of its experiments at the unprecedented energy of 13 TeV, almost double the collision energy of its first run. This marks the start of season 2 at the LHC, opening the way to new discoveries. The LHC will now run round the clock for the next three years.
During its first three years, the LHC ran at a collision energy of 7 to 8 TeV delivering particle collisions to four major experiments: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. With the large amount of data provided by the LHC during this first period, the ATLAS and CMS experiments were able to announce the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson on 4 July 2012, paving the way for the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics to theorists François Englert and Peter Higgs.
In the course of this new stage, the LHC will now open a new window for potential discovery, allowing further studies on the Higgs boson and potentially addressing unsolved mysteries such as dark matter.
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LHC experiments back in business at record energy
After the accident occured at the nuclear power station of Fukushima, Japan, in 2011, the whole population of this country has been worrying about the damage that radiation can cause to people an the environment.
The dismanteling of the rests of the nuclear reactors is still in process and it is expected to last for at least 40 years until the power station can be considered totally safe again. Recent progress has been made through the use of particle physics, concretely by using muon detectors to scan the interior of the broken reactors. These elementary particles coming from cosmic rays, slow down significantly when they pass through very dense objects, which is the case of the nuclear fuel.
The radiography obtained by muon detection shows that there is no nuclear fuel inside the reactor number one. The result means that during the accident, the reactor was improperly cooled for a sufficient time so that the uranium bars inside of it melted falling down and occuping a different position than the optimum one. The technique has not been useful yet for determining the exact position of the melted fuel but it has contributed to proove that the dangerous uranium did not melted through the contention walls.
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Particle Physics helps diagnosing Fukushima reactors
The Cosmic Light Project of the current year of Light has published a trailer to celebrate the cosmic light coming down to earth. You can find it at
http://www.iau.org/public/videos/?search=cosmic
with subtitles in may languages, including English, Spanish and Catalan.
The international Year of Light 2015 will bring together many different stakeholders including scientific societies and unions, educational institutions, technology platforms, non-profit organizations and private sector partners.
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Enjoy now the promotional video of the Year of Light 2015!
At the beginning of 2013 the LCH stopped its activity, so that engineers could start working on the machine for making it funtioning at higher energies in order to unravel during the 2nd run even more misteries than before.
This new energy frontier set at 13TeV will allow scientists to study more deeply several topics, such as the Higgs boson, exotic particles, dark matter, supersymmetry, theories with extra dimensions, antimatter, quarks and gluons plasma, etc.
In the link below you can find the details about how all these fascinating research fields will be soon under study at the LHC when the 2nd run begins in 2015.
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LHC 2nd run: New Frontiers of Physics
At the beginning of 2013 the LCH stopped its activity, so that engineers could start working on the machine for making it funtioning at higher energies.
You might be wondering what are the improvements they made.
In the link below you can find the details about the new magnets, connections, the more powerful jets of particles, cryogenics, voltage, emptyness, etc. All these features and many more have been upgraded or developed specially for the 2nd run of LHC which starts this year.
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LHC 2nd run: A more powerful machine
Nathan Peter Readiof, Atlas PhD student from Liverpool, created a LEGO model of LHCb, three other LHC experiments
and LHC magnets. All together can make a little LHC ring.
and LHC magnets. All together can make a little LHC ring.
The instruction manuals for this set would ideally include some information about CERN, the real detectors and the physics they explore. This set could be a perfect science souvenir for people of all ages, providing a fun building experience together with an introduction to the fascinating and exciting world of particle physics.
If you find nice the idea that this project becomes an official LEGO project, support it by voting at this page:
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LHCb LEGO model