Particle physics

61st Cherwell Simon Memorial Lecture - Professor Fabiola Gianotti (Director General at CERN)

Date: 
20 May 2021 - 5:00pm
Venue: 
Online
Audience: 
General public (Age 14+)
Fabiola Gianotti - Copyright CERN

The 61st Cherwell Simon Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Fabiola Gianotti (Director General at CERN)

'Scientific research (and much more …) at CERN'

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9 April 2021

Prince Philip’s visit to the Department of Physics

Prince Philip with Nicholas Kurti, 4 November, 1960

As Buckingham Palace today announces the death of Prince Philip aged 99, our archivist, Professor Stephen Blundell describes a recorded visit to the Department of Physics on 4 November 1960.

‘The Clarendon archive contains several documents describing the detailed arrangements for Prince Philip’s visit to the Department of Physics, part of an Oxford day out for the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, and in reading them one gets the sense of a different age, where protocol and deference were very much the order of the day.

9 April 2021

Hints of new scientific phenomena

The Muon g-2 ring sits in its detector hall amidst electronics racks, the muon beamline, and other equipment. This impressive experiment operates at negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit and studies the precession (or wobble) of muons as they travel through the magnetic field.

The Fermilab Muon g−2 experiment has released its first results showing the muon magnetic dipole moment differs from the theoretical prediction by a significant margin, confirming the results of an earlier experiment. This might be a sign of new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.

Categories: 

23 March 2021

Growing hints of lepton-universality violation

LHCb-PAPER-2021-004/FigS5.png

The LHCb collaboration has revealed strengthening evidence for a violation of lepton universality in B-mesons decaying to a kaon plus a pair of leptons, electrons compared to muons. This B→Kl+l- decay requires the rare, flavour-changing neutral current transition, b→sl+l-, which is well acknowledged for potential sensitivity to the influence of unknown physics.

Categories: 

15 March 2021

A tale of two detectors

One of the DUNE near detector’s subdetectors, SAND

As the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) reveals more details about its so-called ‘near detector’ at Fermilab, we take a look at what it is and what it might mean for physics.

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Challenges & Changes in Physics: Dr Jason Arday

Date: 
24 Mar 2021 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Venue: 
Online
Audience: 
Students, staff, public

In the fourth lecture of this series, we will hear from Dr Jason Arday from Durham University. Jason is a leading expert in the study of race and education. His research examines the persistence of racism in academia and its effects on black and minority ethnic students and researchers.

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10 March 2021

IceCube detection of ‘Glashow resonance’ proves 60-year-old theory

The IceCube Laboratory at the South Pole and the aurora australis

On 8 December 2016, an electron antineutrino with an energy of 6300 TeV hurtled to Earth from a cosmic accelerator. Deep inside the ice sheet at the South Pole, it smashed into an electron and produced a massive particle that quickly decayed. This interaction was captured by a kilometre-sized 'telescope' buried in the Antarctic glacier – the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.

Challenges & Changes ED&I Panel Discussion

Date: 
11 Mar 2021 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm
Venue: 
Online

The Challenges & Changes team are hosting a a departmental panel discussion on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

Event registration via Eventbrite with password. More details below.

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3 February 2021

Nurturing links with industry for results in scientific research

Professor Philip Burrows wiht CLIC prototype structure at TMD Technologies

Professor Philip Burrows has been working with UK company TMD Technologies to design key elements of a next-generation electron-positron collider at CERN. Professor Burrows leads the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) Collaboration which is preparing the design of the collider that could serve as a ‘factory’ for mass-producing Higgs bosons. Such a Higgs factory has been identified by the global particle physics community as its top priority for a next-generation subatomic particle collider facility.

13 January 2021

Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics: exciting science awaits!

Professor Ian Shipsey

Today, UKRI announced the launch of the Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics (QTFP) programme that will support scientists using quantum technology to study the universe in new ways in order to determine the nature of dark matter, detect gravitational waves and study the physics of black holes. Professor Ian Shipsey is Head of the Department of Physics at Oxford and has championed the programme since its inception:

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