In 2015 the LHCb collaboration, of which Oxford is a founding member, reported the discovery of pentaquark states, an exotic form of subatomic matter that had eluded discovery since its prediction over 50 years previously. Today (26/3/19), using its full data set from Runs 1 and 2 of the LHC, the collaboration has announced a major and surprising update to this analysis.

The LHCb collaboration, of which Oxford is a founding institute, has today (21/3/19) announced a major new discovery in particle physics: the first observation of CP violation in decays of particles containing charm quarks.

The annual MPLS Impact Awards aim to foster and raise awareness of impact by rewarding it at a local level, and prepare the ground for the impact case studies that will be needed for REF 2021, and future similar exercises. This year’s awards were presented at the MPLS Winter Reception on the 19th February at Mansfield College, with the winners receiving a pay award of £1,000.

Congratulations to Oxford Physicist Dr Sam Henry who won the award for Public Engagement with Research Impact.

The University of Oxford has marked the opening of the Beecroft Building, a new 8,950sqm building for experimental and theoretical physics.

World wide web pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee and donor Adrian Beecroft joined the Chancellor, Lord Patten of Barnes, and the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson, to officially open the new state-of-the-art facility located in Oxford University’s science area in Parks Road.

Many congratulations to Guy Wilkinson who has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

You can see the citation at https://royalsociety.org/people/guy-wilkinson-13852/

An Oxford team has succeeded in stabilising the arrival time of a ‘relativistic’ beam of electrons, travelling at almost the speed of light, to 50 femtoseconds. This overcomes one of the major challenges facing the proposed Compact Linear Collider (CLIC).

The mystery of how comets are able to emit X-rays has been solved by a team led by the University of Oxford.

The research published in Nature Physics considers the longstanding scientific question of how comets are able to radiate X-rays. A conundrum that is particularly puzzling, given that such emission is normally associated with very hot objects like the Sun, and comets are among the coldest objects in the Solar System.

Professor Stephen Hawking, 1942-2018

On 13 March 2018, physicists awoke to news that Prof Stephen Hawking, surely Oxford’s best known physics undergraduate (Univ. 1959), had died peacefully in his sleep. He leaves behind a monumental legacy.

The annual MPLS Impact Awards aim to foster and raise awareness of impact by rewarding it at a local level, and prepare the ground for the impact case studies that will be needed for REF 2021, and future similar exercises. This year’s awards were presented at the MPLS Winter Reception on the 6th February at Mansfield College, with the winners receiving a pay award of £1,000 (minus taxes).

Oxford Physicists won awards in three out of the four categories!