Secret Application on Smart Phones

A really important article and corresponding YouTube video exposing what could be some very disturbing news about a seemingly secret and ever present application on Blackberry, Android, and Nokia phones.

This application seems to log every key you press, every website you visit (regardless of https or not) and every call and SMS message you send and receive as well as every place you physically go. This information is reported to a program that you can't detect easily, can not remove, and will send this information to a company you never heard of.

The article from the register is found here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/30/smartphone_spying_app/

The youtube video is here:



I'll be following this issue closer...I've been considering moving into the 21st century and getting a smart phone, but this makes me much less eager.

Who Killed President Kennedy? A Review of Evidence

On November 22nd I had the pleasure to attend a lecture at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs with my brother Robert Asaadi who is a PhD student in the political science.

The reason I drove all the way to Minneapolis to see this lecture was simple, the former Governor Jesse Ventura was coming to discuss the evidence supporting the conspiracy theory around the killing of President Kennedy.

Now he didn't appear alone, with him was Judge John R. Tunheim who served for more than 11 years as a United States District Judge since taking his oath of office on December 29, 1995. Tunheim served as chairman of the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board, an independent federal agency responsible for reviewing and facilitating public disclosure of previously classified government records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Anyone who has ever seen an interview with Governor Ventura knows that he is not a man to speak lightly on such a subject nor does he pull punches. However, unlike what comes across when in a hostile setting (say like fox news) he is a very respectful man and whether you agree or disagree he speaks plainly and directly while still respecting the opposite opinion.

The University of Minnesota has made the audio available (which you can listen to here).

Of course no single issue was resolved here...but it was exciting to hear from two people who have studied this issue in a scholarly way (one from the judicial aspect the other from dedicating reading and publicly available information) that this issue is far from settled and the things that at one time were considered outrageous (such as the presence of more then one shooter) is now becoming more generally accepted!

I would encourage anyone if given the opportunity to see Governor Ventura speak they should defiantly seize upon it.

New measurement by OPERA...same strange result?!?!

So the BBC is reporting that the results of the neutrino run done most recently by the OPERA experiment is confirming their previous result and continuing to find superluminal neutrino speeds.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15791236

In this iteration of the experiment OPERA attempted to address, amongst many points, one of their largest sources of uncertainty. Namely, the bunch length of the protons that were being sent from CERN and were producing the neutrinos that they were measuring.

By shortening the bunch widths you have a greater certainty about where the neutrinos are being created and thus you know your initial time to a much higher degree of accuracy.

Needless to say this is a big deal if it is true.

They have updated their paper to include this systematic "fix" as well as complete discussion of various other effects taken into account can be found here on the arxiv.

This is a very exciting find in physics and with the reported plan to submit this paper for review to a journal a final vetting is in due course.

Now we must wait for this experiment to be repeated by the many other long baseline experiments, such as MINOS here at Fermilab and T2K in Japan!

So if your days have been anything like mine in recent weeks anytime I talk to anyone with even a vague semblance of what particle physics is and that I am an experimentalist (in training of course) the question comes....
"So what about CERN proving Einstein wrong with those things going faster than light?"
 


To which I respond politely, "Crazy stuff...but anytime someone says they see something going faster than light I put my hand on my wallet because something is fishy".

If the person is nice/interested enough to want a further explanation I try to explain what the OPERA measurement is along with loads of caveats that I don't work on this experiment,  as scientists they did hundreds of cross-checks, and that they wouldn't release this result if they weren't convinced something is strange here...etc...etc...

If someone is daring enough to push and ask what I think about it my response has been simple: "Science is about repeatability and accuracy so I'll wait till the next group of experimentalists weighs in".

Today on the BBC I saw the news announcement that "Faster-than-light neutrino experiment to run again". Aside from the obvious things wrong with the title of the argument (this wasn't an experiment to search for faster-than-light neutrinos) the article explains that during this next run they are going to attempt to remove on of the largest possible sources of systematic errors in the OPERA measurment, namely the length of the length of the proton bunch widths being sent towards Gran Sasso from 10 microseconds to ~ 1 nanosecond  with ~ 500 nanoseconds between pulses.

While you still can't measure exactly which neutrino is from which proton the way you would like to in a perfect measurement, this should allow them to be more accurate on average than before and take away a source of error many people I would consider experts have said is of greatest concern.
While I'm sure this is only one  of many improvements that will be made to this measurement to address all the...shall we say..."constructive criticism" the OPERA experiment has received since their result. The bad news is that if they end up with a null measurement and find that neutrinos don't in fact go faster than the speed of light the news and fan fare will be much less...because while for scientists a null result is still a result...for the rest of the world a null result is not news.

So I think we have some interesting times in experimental physics coming in the very near future!

Quantum Man: Richard Feynman

There was an exceptional lecture about Richard Feynman given at CERN a few days ago that was shared by a colleague and wanted to repost here.

From the CERN document server: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1386327

Lawrence Krauss gives a very nice overview of some of the things that I think made Feynmann exceptional both in his physics and in being a human in a field of giants (physics).

Like most people coming up after this exceptional man I too was influenced by his writings and his legend and as I make the transition from graduate student to Post-doc I can only hope to have my path as rich as Feynman's was!

Fermilab's Tevatron Shutdown Event

So this Friday is the shutdown of Fermilab's Proton/Anti-Proton Collider the Tevatron. After almost 30 years of service and numerous discoveries the collider has run her course and is scheduled to be turned off.
Instead of this being a sad event Fermilab is going to let the old girl go out with a bang! A celebration is planned and I hope to be able to blog about it and bring pictures and thoughts about the days activities.

CDF has their experiments collaboration meeting going on over the next few days (at which I am giving a talk on my own analysis) and then a big celebration planned on Friday when they finally shut down the detector and the accelerator.
Live streaming media from both the Main Control room as well as CDF and D0 control rooms will be provided by Fermilab Visual Media Services.

Additionally, Chicago's own National Public Radio WBEZ did a show about the Tevatron that can be found here

The festivities and physics to come are sure to be exciting. So instead of being sad about the end of one of the most ground breaking experiments in science...here is a picture of a Corgi in a swing....adorable!

Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam

Here is the article on the anomaly being reported for the speed of neutrinos from CERN to the OPERA detector in Italy

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1109.4897v1

Good read and helps deal with the first set of questions I had about this phenomenon. (Accuracy of the position measurement for one)

Now time to digest and see before we turn the world of physics on its head!

Neutrinos going faster than the speed of light?

All the buzz is there...did experimentalists observe neutrinos going faster than the speed of light?

To be honest I don't know and am still gathering information. I'll bet many of my friends and colleagues are in the same boat as me being asked questions through the many channels available to us (Facebook, Twitter, etc...)  to weigh in when we are just finding out ourselves.

There will be a webcast of a talk by the collaborators from OPERA tomorrow and here is the link
http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=155620

Hope this helps everyone in figuring out if this is real...I will have more to say on this in the coming days!

Muddy Buddy Chicago 2011

Team Bobby Got Loose (that is my wife and I's team name) took 10th place this year in Muddy Buddy in the COed 46-55 division out of 60 teams in our same bracket!

This was a huge improvement over the last year with a finishing time of 46:16.4. This was only 3 seconds behind the # 9 place and 6:45 behind first place.

The course was extra fast this year and my wife really performed well. I kind-of over sprinted the first few legs of the race and ended up walking at least 2 mins of the last run which I think cost us a higher placing. However, we still did pretty well! Combined with our 11th place finish in Chicago's Urban Assault 2011 I'd say we had a good race year thus far.


Links to the Muddy Buddy Results can be found here and Overall results found here
That's right 194th out of 1124 competitors. That is top 17% out of all Muddy Buddies!

Ubuntu One!

So as I might have mentioned in the past I have made a full transition to every computer in my house to Linux (with the exception of my wife's Mac, which she loves). The platform I have chosen after sampling many different releases is Ubuntu 11.04.

After a few hiccups getting important applications installed on my desktop and laptop that I use for particle physics work (Kerberos, ROOT, etc...all of which have now been resolved by either Ubuntu or the respective software release) I have been very impressed by the look and running of this OS. The installation on both my laptop and my desktop with dual screen was the easiest thing I've ever done in Linux. Gone is the day of having to hack away at your video card and wireless card to trick you computer into accepting Linux and letting you move on with your day.

Now Ubuntu has taken the next step and offers cloud storage FOR FREE! They call their service Ubuntu One and as of this last month you get 5 GB of free storage. Additionally they already offer streaming music to you Android mobile device along with the sync of your contacts. They are also developing the platform on the iPhone as well with that expected to come soon.

This feature alone has improved my work life 5 fold. Between going to meeting, traveling to and from the lab, and working from home I was always trying to remember which file on what computer was the most recent version of my thesis paper, analysis nTuple, or even event reduction table. Now I don't have to worry about it, I just end my work session with allowing Ubuntu One to sync anything I chose to drop into the shared folder and then download it when I get home or to my laptop. Also the looming fear of a computer crashing and losing all my work is greatly diminished, a horror story I've heard from too many particle physics people.

The feature is expandable and for a low price they are offering up to 20 GB of cloud and streaming, however I expect that number to rise. If you have been looking to make the jump into Linux world and the world of free software and open source code, this distribution is for you.

Oh yeah, did I mention that they are allowing Ubuntu One to be open source development...so you know the world of users are only going to make this feature even better.

Cosmology with Prof Susskind from Standford

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

I found this great video on a cosmology lecture given by Prof Leonard Susskind that is one in a 4 part series of Cosmology lectures. 

I think the video is very good and the Q&A session at the very beginning is a great chance to hear some of the most common questions when it comes to Cosmology explained clearly and with a lay-man in mind!

Enjoy

Fermilab Budget Woes Continue

While most labs managed to dodge a bullet (what really looked like a giant bomb) in the 2011 budget. There is still many problems coming. Announced Thursday and reported on the Courier News and this blog that Fermilab will seek to reduce its staff by 5% through a voluntary program.

With the ending of the Tevatron program in September this doesn't come as too much of a surprise, however it doesn't do much to boost moral around the lab. In fact, even though much of the talk is on the future experiments like Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), Mu2e (website), and the future of Project X (website) there can't help but be a sense of loss for many scientist working there.

For me, trying desperately to finish my thesis on work at CDF and looking for post-docs that might keep me in the Chicago land area, pieces of news about the shrinking of the lab only causes me to take pause and check to see if going down this path is the best for me.

The little support and almost no excitement coming from a budget strapped government towards science makes it hard for a young researcher to keep a stiff upper lip and look to the future with too much optimism .

Oh well, more focus on thesis and hopefully when I lift my head there will be a good position on an interesting and well funded experiment to work on.

DZero Doesn't see the same excess as CDF!

So the physics world is all a buzz with the reported excess in the W+2 Jet channel reported by CDF.

The graph here shows the most recent result released by CDF in the W+ 2 Jet channel for 7.3 fb-1 and shows a clear (and growing) excess in the invariant mass range around 150 GeV. The community has been buzzing with speculation and ideas as to what this phenomenon could be. From mis-modeling to Technicolor (a new model of physics) the result isn't really clear. But something seems to be really there.

The really exciting thing is that CDF's sister experiment at the Tevatron, DZero, has publicly released their findings in the same channel today and they don't seem to see anything. (See the public release by Fermilab here).

So what does it all mean? Well clearly something is happening here. The CDF result has been checked and double checked from within the collaboration (that is really the only way such a result could ever see the light of day) and now you have an independent check by another experiment on the same data and they don't see anything! The fury of discussion as to whether DZero and CDF are doing identical things will launch as well as much debate as to what it means and how to proceed.

To me this is where physics is really interesting! Methods of analysis and meaning and understanding will be hotly debated. DZero will be giving a seminar talk today at 4pm and is webcasted here.

For sure what is to come will be what makes science great. Checks, cross-checks, argument, and ultimately (and probably after many sleepless nights and hurt ego's) agreement to what causes such deviations.

Get Excited!

Fermilab Users Meeting

Today and tomorrow are the 44th annual Fermilab Users Meeting.
This meeting will highlight the many exciting activities that are coming from Fermilab including Collider Physics (like the stuff I work on) as well as Astro-Particle, Neutrino, and future plans for the lab.

The big draw this year seems to be the already "sold out" (I put this in quotes because the tickets were free, but had to be requested) public talk that will be given on Thursday by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. There is some overflow seating that will be made available so even if you don't have tickets it may still be worth the while to come.

So far today there has been many good talks, one I especially liked was given by Brendan Casey of Fermilab on the new g-2 experiment that is slated to begin after the much morned shutdown of the Tevatron. His talk can be found here (https://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=4156). Something that won't come across in the slides (which are very well done!) is the fact that he gave the talk in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt and said that the exciting part of his experiment is "we get to use helicopters, and everyone knows helicopters are awesome". This eludes to how they will transport part of their experimental set-up from where it is now to Fermilab.

See an overview of the meeting here: http://www.fnal.gov/orgs/fermilab_users_org/users_mtg/2011/

Urban Assault 2011 Chicago

Well, this years Urban Assault ride was a spectacular as the rest! My wife and I didn't have time this year to do the online quiz (really busy with work and thesis stuff) so the bad news is we started in the last wave (5 mins behind the first wave).

However even with this handicap we still managed to finish 11th place for all coeds (Team "Bobby Got Loose") and 38th overall! This is our best finish ever and we had a lot of good luck.


View Urban Assault 2011 in a larger map

First of all Heather did a great job planning out the route (see map above) and choosing the initial path to go clockwise around the circle. Then as we approached the first mystery checkpoint a very kind women was screaming the location (and solution to the anagram) of the second check point (Fat Cat Bar and Grill). This allowed us to spend very little time at the mystery checkpoint and it also happened to be right in our direction as we were heading back to home base!
As always the orgainizers did an outstanding job and the beer and food was ready and waiting for all the riders when we got back. Heather and I didn't do costumes like last year (we had come in banana costumes) but people recognized us and the vibe was quite friendly. This was the first year some Chicago friends did the race as well and they loved it. Granted we smoked their time ;-) so I think we really had the best of times. More pictures from the race to come....

Tevatron still kicking proton/antiproton butt!

I thought I would share this post from the Tevatron's Facebook page (can be found here).
Just in the last week we had 6 of the top 10 initial luminosity stores from the Tevatron and the accelerator delivered 78 pb-1 of data in just the last week!
This is really an amazing accomplishment for this accelerator and with this rate of data delivery we can be sure that both experiments that operate on the Main Ring (CDF and D0) will have lots of data to analyze before the planned shutdown in September.
For those of you that don't exactly know what these numbers mean, this is just a simple way of measuring the amount of interactions (or collisions) that we will get during the operation of the accelerator. The higher the luminosity, the greater chance that the collisions will occur and the more interesting data we have to record. What is truly amazing is after 25 years of operations the Tevatron is performing like never before and delivering data and unprecedented rates! This means that there is a greater chance of catching a glimpse at rare processes in physics that may be buried in our data.
Even more clear explanations and updated numbers for the Tevatron can be found here:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlumexp.html

Support your Schools

Very simple, this came across my Facebook news feed  and I think it speaks volumes to the problem with the way education is viewed in the United States.

Quote from the photo:
"School elections and levies today in Helena- this picture was taken by a good friend and school librarian here in Helena. She couldn't help herself, had to go back and add the correction sign under the vote no sign. Poor funding really does have a long term result!"

Important Reults coming from XENON100

In an article titled Dark Matter Results from 100 Live Days of XENON100 Data the XENON collaboration reports some of the most stringent restrictions on direct dark matter searches to date.

You can find the article here on the arXiv.

With only 3 candidate events on a background of ~2.4 this puts strict restrictions on the available parameter space for WIMP dark matter candidates.

Just eking out their CDMS rivals their results spell trouble for many SUSY models that predict Lightest Stable Particles (LSP's) of low mass range to make up the world of dark matter we observe from astronomy.

Any way you take it, science is honing in on what dark matter "could" be by excluding where it isn't!

Explanation of hints at new physics from CDF

There is a good summary article in the New York Times (see link here) that talks about the exciting new physics that will be reported today from CDF (Collider Detection at Fermilab).

I spoke about this in my previous blog post (see link here) and the talk is being given today at Fermilab.

The basic summary, "If it is real, than it is really exciting!" says it best.

Imporant new result from CDF

So there is a really exciting Wine and Cheese Seminar scheduled for Wednesday April 6th at Fermilab to talk about an exciting result being reported in the "W+2 Jet " channel.

You will be able to find the talk here: http://theory.fnal.gov/jetp/

IF streaming video is available for this talk you will find it here: http://vms-db-srv.fnal.gov/fmi/xsl/VMS_Site_2/000Return/video/r_live.xsl


For those of you on the fringe of particle physics this will be talk about a new result from the collaboration about production of a fundamental particle known as a W boson. This particle is one of the fundamental messenger particles in the Standard Model. A "Jet" is just a deposit of energy found in our detector coming from the collision.

What is exciting about this somehow boring sounding title is that there could be evidence for all kind of interesting things when looking at what is thought to be "well understood".

No matter how you look at it, this result was important enough to schedule a special seminar...so lots of eyes in the physics world will be looking at it

TED Talk "Sean Gourley on the mathematics of war "

A good friend of mine recently posted this talk on his Facebook feed and I simply found the power of looking at the data brought to bear by this group of physicists on the complex problem of war and insurgency strategy really fascinating.

I would say the graph shown at the end where he plots "alpha" over time for the Iraq War the proverbial "punchline" to the true power of showing that what they have modeled here has some actual real world value.

Recontres de Morinond

I thought I would share a good link to find all the current talks being given in the particle physics world from the conference Recontres de Moriond.

The link to the talks is here

As said on the website the purpose of this conference is:

The purpose of the Rencontres de Moriond is to discuss recent findings and new ideas in physics in a pleasant, relaxed and convivial atmosphere. The meeting is intended to promote fruitful collaboration between various communities and institutes by bringing together a small number of scientists in inspiring surroundings.

Of course being in the Italian alps helps the relaxing and convivial atmosphere, I am sure. 

While I'm not personally giving any talks at this conference many people I know are and you can expect some big name talks coming from the Tevatron. 

Climbing at Horse Pens 40

Last December I got the opportunity to go climbing at Horse Pens 40 in Alabama with three of my good friends and wanted to share some of the wonderful experiences.

First off, a party of 4 was  a great size for this sort of trip. My buddy on the left (Reese) and his fiancée (Danny) met Sham (far right) and I in Texas and we drove to Horse Pens. The camping was awesome with water and fire pits. It was cold at night but the main cabin stayed open till midnight and we would go there and play cards and talk till it was time to climb into the sleeping bags. I recommend anyone who wants a semi-rustic experience for camping that is only 50 feet from the boulders this is the place for you.

Now Reese is a solid V5/V6 boulder'er and was sending some super hard stuff the entire time we were there including some of the classic lines of Horse Pens. I show a picture of Mortal Kombat which was this super hard slab climb that Reece was working on. We didn't have time to take our own picture since as this photo shows the landing was super sketchy and I give Reese much props for even taking that fall so many times.

I could go on about all the great sending that was done by my friends including our friend Danny who is all of 4 feet 11 inches tall and sent two of Horse Pens V3's. Instead I want to tell some about the climbs I managed to finish and some of the ones I left for next time.


Completed Climbs during our 4 day trip

Spirit (Heel Hooks to slab to crimpers)

Bumboy - V3 (The hardest V3 in the south)
Spirit - V3 (Photo on the right)
Earth Wind Fire - V3
(Featureless Slab with a great fall zone)
Twix Lips - V3
Never Trust a Mustach - V4
(Great heel hook hand match to a BIG throw to a tiny crimp then a long 20 foot hall)
Lady Slipper - V2 (Fun tall big holds)
Tic or Tie - V4 (Tough few lines)

Sandbox (I hated this "easy" V2 with the worst feet ever!)

Climbs left for next time

Boogie Wonderland  V4 (Uncompleted)
Sandbox - V2 (Worst climb in the south)
Hammerhead - V5

(One of the first climbs you see at HP, hanging upsidedown for 10 moves to a tall topout near the stage)
Popeye - V5 (Super hard moves on tiny holds in a overhung area to a rough top out)
Millipede - V5

(Climb near Bumboy...like trying to scale the back of a dinosaur)

Looking down from Hammerhead at Popeye

 December was a great time to go climb in Alabama. The air was crisp, you stuck to the rock like a magnet, it wasn't super crazy busy, and the daylight lasted till 7 or 8 pm.

The people that own/run Horse Pens 40 were really friendly and the price to camp was very resonable (15 dollars per person per night...I think). You are still close to a big city so if you need supplies it isn't a long trek but you are remote enough that you could spend a couple months climbing and camping away from it all.
I plan on going back to Horse Pens sometime in 2011 to Hammerhead, Millipede, and Sandbox for sure...and to explore the rest of the amazing climbs.

Budget Problems facing the U.S.

Budget Problems facing the U.S.

If it seems that the news lately has been grim coming out of the U.S…it is because it is. In a talk yesterday by the director of Fermilab Pier Oddone laid out some very bleak circumstances for the coming year that Fermilab and many scientific ventures face.
See Pier’s talk here (http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/Lectures/AllHands/presentations/110215AllHands.pptx)
The short of it is the budget put forward by the Republican congress would slash domestic spending in view of the fact that the U.S would see 1.5 trillion dollar deficit in Fiscal Year 2011. Now that being said, these proposals actually only effect < 20% of the total budget and definitely don’t fix the total problem.

However, the impact would be very real! Since the U.S government has be acting on a continuing resolution (basically saying keep 2010 spending and appropriations since Congress didn’t pass a new budget), getting a 20% cut now actually amounts to a 40% cut for the rest of the year! This fact has DIRE impact on Fermilab

As Pier said in his talk

Impossible to accommodate such cuts without major disruptions:

1) Stop operation of all accelerators immediately

2) Slow down projects to barely keep-alive levels

3) Prepare layoffs of 20% of the staff or 400 employees

4) Furlough staff for roughly two of the remaining six months

This coming on the heels of the announcement that there would be no extension to the running of the Tevatron in 2011 means that things would slow down in the US High Energy Physics area very quickly with no clear signs of when they will pick up again.

Frankly, for a government that is purporting not wanting to miss “their sputnik moment” the idea of drastically cutting funding to fundamental research seems just plain stupid! Innovation does not happen in a climate where people are worried if the lab they work at is going to be there tomorrow…nor will “job creation” and “a balanced budget” happen by cutting spending to a small fraction of the overall budget that actually generates jobs and opportunities in the United States. The best quote I’ve heard to describe this sort of approach to budgetary problem solving was in an article in the Washington Post (linked here)

“Making the government lean by cutting the most defensible (and productive) federal spending is akin to making an overweight aircraft fly by removing the engine!”

So what do we do? Write your congressman/congresswomen and tell them that gutting science is no way to the future! There are instructions on the webpage of how to get this letter written. I encourage all readers to write to help save such great scientific programs such as Fermilab!

http://www.congressweb.com/

cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/

APSPA/action/TakeAction.Contact

/lettergroupid/90

LHC to Run Through 2012

An important announcement was made today by CERN indicating that the Large Hadron Collider will run through 2012 choosing to put off a previously long term shutdown to repair known problems that exist with the magnets.

This announcement comes on the heels of the announcement that the Tevatron will shutdown sometime (September?) of this year thus ending the High Energy Physics program at Fermilab.

Part of the announcement I found interesting was:

“With the LHC running so well in 2010, and further improvements in performance expected, there’s a real chance that exciting new physics may be within our sights by the end of the year,” Said CERN’s Research Director, Sergio Bertolucci. “For example, if nature is kind to us and the lightest supersymmetric particle, or the Higgs boson, is within reach of the LHC’s current energy, the data we expect to collect by the end of 2012 will put them within our grasp."

That is of course providing the Higgs isn't light as has been suspected by many. If nature chose that as the possibility then really the Tevatron was the right game to be playing...but only time will tell.

Granted I am a little sore still about the Tevatron not getting the funding I think it needs to finish on the strong note it deserves...but there are really a lot of physics questions left.

Additionally, while the LHC was showing major improvements in the last weeks of Proton/Proton collisions (nearly doubling their data set in one week) particle accelerators are tricky things and previous results does not predict future performance. There is still a lot of tuning to do before this machine is ready to do the monumental stuff it promises.

There is a good deal to be optimistic about as was outlined in a talk I attended from CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) given at Fermilab this last week. (See Link Here w/ link to talk to come...)

Tevatron to Shutdown!

As was announced today by the director of Fermilab (see here) there will be no extension to the running of the Tevatron beyond 2011.
As stated:

"The present budgetary climate did not permit DOE to secure the additional funds needed to run the Tevatron for three more years as recommended by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel."
This marks a very sad day for me to hear that the experiment I am working on and have grown to love will be ending after this year.
It is especially hard to hear considering that this choice is being made (at least publicly) by budgetary considerations and not by the recommendation of the science that drives field.
I'll probably have more to say on this in the coming days...but for now I have a PhD to finish and thought it would be worth while to post briefly on this.

See more related articles here:
From the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2011/jan/10/1
From Chicago Buisness: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/3242019-418/tevatron-fermilab-funding-accelerator-energy.html