Thursday, December 31, 2009

Thought for the day

On this New Years day my trolling through the web came across this link

http://blog.thaczuk.com/?p=124

The mantra to take from this and what I working on for the next year

Climb Hard...Climb Dedicated...A 5.12 isn't hard!


It seems so simple but sometimes reading this is really what I need...and even more so the word "climb" can be substituted for anything I want to be good at in my life

Happy New Years to Everyone!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

What did Santa bring the world of particle physics?

In short, Santa has brought the world of particle physics a huge hint and a leveling pain. The CDMS experiment (a direct dark matter detection group) has just published their latest results and the verdict is....WE CAN'T SAY ANYTHING!!!


As you can see from above the results of their search show two events in the signal region...and two more events so damn close you could sneeze them into the signal region. What does it mean?
Well with an expected background of +/- 0.8 events it means it isn't statistically significant enought to say anything.

It should be noted that in their previous results they had roughly the same background but had to report 0 events. So going from 0 to 2 events after adding another year of data is important...but in principal could be a statistical fluctuation.

So what is direct dark matter detection?
In a nut shell the argument goes like this...if dark matter is as pervasive in the universe as we believe then our planet, our solar system, and our galaxy is swimming in a sea of dark matter. However, this dark matter is very weakly interacting but very massive (called W.I.M.P.S., Weakly Interacting Massive ParticleS) so we can observe its existence indirectly by looking at how it interacts gravitationally.
That being said, even if the stuff doesn't interact with ordinary matter that much, if we but a whole bunch of dense material in a place where nothing else can interact with it and keep it very cold so it isn't vibrating around thermally. Then in a very rare case when one of the dark matter particles that is zipping through our planet hits some of the dense material we should be able to observe it. That is what the detectors at CDMS do.
They are very dense materials kept at near absolute zero at the bottom of a huge mine in the northern part of the U.S. Often dubbed the "Low Background Frontier" they are extremely sensitive and hold the best chance for finding dark matter directly.
With the tantalizing results of 2009 I'm sure they will be carefully and feverishly taking data in 2010 to try to beat the LHC in direct detection of dark matter
So could it be that Santa has brought us some direct detection of Dark Matter and solved a great puzzle in physics? Stay tuned in 2010!

Monday, December 21, 2009

Awesome Accelerator Book Online

Useful Accelerator Book that Google brings to me FREE

This is (in-part) related to my research and was put together by some giants in the field of High Energy Accelerators. So I share with everyone!
The link to it can be found here

5.10 d (my current climbing obsession)

During the cold and snowy days in Chicago I find myself at a local climbing gym called Vertical Endeavor's. This is really a premier climbing gym in the Chicagoland area and has amazing sport-lead routes, top rope, auto-belay, and bouldering.


Currently I am working on a lead project, a 5.10d that hangs over "the bridge" and finishes at the top of a 30 foot vertical ascent.

I haven't had a route like this ever consume my energy and thoughts the way this route does. There are 9 clips (5 in the overhang area) to the anchors and I can get through the first 8 without a fall.

The roof section is all on jugs and even coming out of the overhung area isn't that bad. The problem is I'm so pumped that by the time I'm doing the 30 foot slightly overhanging vertical ascent I blow out before I reach the last clip and the anchors.

I've managed to finish this route in one-fall...but never got my red-point. The route that is currently in this arrangement will likely be there for another couple of weeks and my hope is to send it before then.

Really routes like this is why I started climbing and learning to lead. So I need to get this one before I move on!!!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

1st 2.36 TeV Collision Observed at CERN

While circulating 1.18 TeV proton beams around the LHC in the beginning stages of tests of the new accelerator the ATLAS experiment (one of two major multipurpose detectors designed to look for collisions) observed a candidate event that could prove to be the first major new collision at the High Energy Frontier.

While seeing only one event in a detector that happened to have its magnet off (hence why all the tracks look straight and make particle identification impossible) isn't enough to triumph the end of the era of the Tevatron (Fermilab's Particle Accelerator) but it does bring us one step closer to the new era of really high energy physics!

Exciting Times in the world of particle physics!