Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas!

What does a modern particle experiment look like? Here are some pictures of one under construction: Mu2e at Fermilab. This year, I became a theory member of this experiment. I would like to thank Mu2e co-spokesperson, Robert Bernstein, for showing us the experiment and providing great explanations.🧪

A concortium of private donors gave $1B to CERN! Could Fermilab in the US build a muon collider with the help of private investors? 🧪

Big news from Fermilab! The new FNAL director, Dr. Norbert Holtkamp, will start on 12 January 2026! 🧪

FCC-ee collider, here we go! 🧪

The European Strategy for Particle Physics reaches an important milestone At its 225th session, the #CERN Council received the recommendations for the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics. Read more: home.cern/news/press-r...

“Federal funding of basic research sparked and sustained the modern technological revolution.” 🧪 cacm.acm.org/federal-fund...

Happy Thanksgiving! (The image was created by ChatGPT. Do you have a policy for using AI at your University?)

New paper! This is a popular discussion of dark stars, the astrophysical objects proposed by D. Spolyar, K. Freese, and P. Gondolo, that I wrote for The Conversation. I appreciate your comments! 🧪 theconversation.com/when-darknes...

Come to study at USC! P.S. That picture of students watching the solar eclipse… the party was organized by the USC Department of Physics and Astronomy! 🧪 www.thetimes.com/us/news-toda...

New paper! This is a review article prepared for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Particle Physics. 🧪 inspirehep.net/literature/3...

New paper! Together with Arnau Bas i Beneito and Svjetlana Fajfer we study baryon number violating mixing of a Lambda baryon with its antiparticle. We show that indirect constraints on Lambda-antiLambda oscillations preclude its observation at colliders. 🧪 inspirehep.net/literature/3...

For those students in calculus-based physics classes 🧪 youtu.be/P9dpTTpjymE?...

Big news: China will not include Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC), a proposed Higgs factory, in the next five-year plan. According to the article, “China will consider other large science projects […] including a proposed Super Tau–Charm Facility” - a good news for flavor physics. 🧪

Harvard is hit hard… 🧪 www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Today, October 22, is International Wombat Day! Happy IWD! Let me remind you that wombat-related research led to an IgNobel prize in 2019 improbable.com/2021/07/23/t... 🧪

Note that physics is NOT among those… www.visualcapitalist.com/the-most-und...

Next week is the Nobel week! Let’s speculate on who might get the Physics prize this year? My pick: Aharonov and Berry 🧪

A cool car that I saw in Germany. You can park everywhere - and if there is no parking spot available, you just put it in your backpack!

Our two brand new Technology-Enhanced Active Learning (TEAL) labs are (almost) ready to welcome new students next week! We use them to teach Studio Physics at the University of South Carolina 🧪

Nuclear reactor on the Moon! 🧪

Is it the name of a cat or the name of a particle physics experiment? forms.gle/f3mGxKjt6jAe...

Europe is wooing American researchers with funding as the Trump administration cancels grants 🧪 t.co/EvQ9P6AmPf

Is this one of the meteors from the Bootid Meteor Shower? What do you think? 🧪 www.wltx.com/article/tech...

The 2025 SLAC Summer Institute is online only? Is this change for this year or a permanent move? Curious as a 1996 SSI participant and a big fan… 🧪 indico.slac.stanford.edu/event/9605/o...

The 8-point vision from the Elementary Particle Physics review panel from the National Academies: muon collider and FCC 🧪

“The latest experimental value of the magnetic moment of the muon from the Fermilab experiment is: aμ = (g-2)/2 (muon, experiment) = 0.001 165 920 705 +- 0.000 000 000 114(stat.)+- 0.000 000 000 091(syst.)” Amaing experimental precision! Also consistent with the SM… 🧪 news.fnal.gov/2025/06/muon...

Leinweber Foundation’s greatest gift to theoretical physics: $90M to five institutes of theoretical physics at Michigan, U of Chicago, UC Berkeley, IAS, and MIT 🧪 www.prnewswire.com/news-release...

This does not sound good, if true… what is the rational behind killing one of the most successful enterprises in this country - and I mean, science? 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

While €500M is not that much in general, if directed towards young professors, it can drain the US talent pool. 🧪 www.reuters.com/science/eus-...

Here's an updated look at new awards from NSF. Comparison is between April/May of 2024 vs. this year. You can see the pause from 4/15–4/22, as well as the freeze started on 4/30. (Other flat areas are from weekends)

Hmmm… any comments? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Fantastic news! Great thanks to Bonnie and Peter McCausland for this unprecedented gift. www.sc.edu/uofsc/posts/...

And we are off! Portoroz 2025 is starting 🧪

A great crowd for our first Astronomy on Tap at Bierkeller Columbia! Thank you for joining us! Let’s do it again! 🧪 @astronomyontap.bsky.social

Secondary review at NSF? “In the meantime, according to those sources, NSF will not make any new awards.” www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪

“DOE announced that it will limit financial support of “indirect costs” of DOE research funding to 15%.” www.energy.gov/articles/dep...

Some say that one should not read the papers when cleaning your room. If I did not, I would have thrown out that paper that the great John Bahcall sent to me back in 2000 when I was a postdoc at Cornell… 🧪

Congratulations to my colleagues on ALICE, ATLAS, CMS, and LHCb experiments on their 2025 Breakthrough Prize! 🧪

Join us at Bierkeller Columbia on April 16th at 6:30 pm for the first Astronomy on Tap in Columbia, SC! We’ll have two talks, trivia, and prizes! Brought to you by USC and Bierkeller! #astronomyontap #AstroOnTap 🧪

What do you do in the mornings? Do you think it’s a prerequisite for Physics 101? 🧪

Ok, the tusks are still missing… 🧪

Only in Japan: disposable individual drip coffee system.

It is literally set in stone! 🧪

It is snowing in Tsukuba (KEK Lab)…

Comments, anyone? www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Comments, anyone? www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Interesting… we do not do that. Any other places put restrictions on their PhD admissions? 🧪 www.wesa.fm/health-scien...

Neutrino of the energy of 120 PeV (Petaelectron-volt)! That’s a lot. Got a theory for that? 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science!🧪