Mar 16

It’s Official: We’ve Found the Higgs Boson. But Which One?

I found this story over on Scientific American and found it interesting
gammagamma_run194108_evt564224000_ispy_3d-nologo-300x192

Higgs to two-photon candidate event as seen by CMS in May 2012

When last we checked in on the hunt for the Higgs, physicists weren’t yet ready to call the deal done. They were only willing to say that they had discovered a new particle—some sort of boson—and that this new boson was “Higgs-like.” Their reticence hinged on the measurement of the new particle’s spin, a fundamental quality that, for bosons, must take an integer value such as 0, 1 or 2. Both in July, whenthe proto-Higgs was first announced, and in November, when scientists released additional data analysis, they didn’t have enough data to definitively say that the boson had a spin of zero, which a Higgs must have.

That uncertainty has now melted away. This week, physicists gathered in Moriond, Italy announced that additional data from the Large Hadron Collider’s 2012 data run now conclusively show that the new boson has a spin of zero, and is thus a Higgs boson

Read Full Story Here

Mar 15

NASA Spacecraft Sees Comet, Earth and Mercury Together

smcomet-pan-starrs-earth-mercuryImage Credit:NASA
 

 

A new video from a NASA spacecraft studying the sun has captured an unexpected sight: a wandering comet posing with the planets Earth and Mercury.

The cosmic view comes from one of NASA’s twin Stereo spacecraft that constantly watch the sun for signs of solar flares and other space weather events. It shows Mercury and Earth as they appeared with the Comet Pan-STARRS, a comet that is currently visible from the Northern Hemisphere during evening twilight.

The probe captured the video of Comet Pan-STARRS, Earth and Mercury together while observing the sun from March 9 to March 12.

Read Full Story Here

Mar 14

NASA’s SDO Observes Earth, Lunar Transits in Same Day

Left: The Earth eclipses the sun.

Left: The view of the sun is partially obscured by Earth as seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on Mar. 11, 2013, at 2:20 a.m. EDT. Credit: NASA/SDO
Right: This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on Mar. 11, 2013, at 8:00 a.m. EDT, shows the moon crossing in front of the sun. Credit: NASA/SDO
› View left side larger
› View right side larger

On March 2, 2013, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) entered its semiannual eclipse season, a period of three weeks when Earth blocks its view of the sun for a period of time each day. On March 11, however, SDO was treated to two transits. Earth blocked SDO’s view of the sun from about 2:15 to 3:45 a.m. EDT. Later in the same day, from around 7:30 to 8:45 a.m. EDT, the moon moved in front of the sun for a partial eclipse.

 

Read Full Story Here