Eventi, Notizie, Pubblicazioni
Claudia Merlassino was born in Genoa, studied physics in Milan and completed her doctorate at the University of Bern in October 2019, since then she has been doing research at Oxford University in the UK. At the age of 28, the Italian experimental physicist has already made a remarkable journey as a researcher. She is now receiving the PhD prize in Swiss particle physics - among other things for her findings in the context of the most massive of all elementary particles.
Executive summary of an analysis prepared by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) for the European Physical Society (EPS)
Immagine: European Physical SocietyBuilding on the technology of the current generation ground-based high-energy gamma-ray telescopes, the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), made of about 100 telescopes located in La Palma and in Chile, will be ten times more sensitive than current instruments and have unprecedented energy coverage and accuracy. The CTAO will be the first ground-based gamma-ray observatory open to the worldwide scientific community.
Immagine: CTAEin Vortrag von Prof. Dr. Thomas Stocker, Physikalisches Institut, Universität Bern
Immagine: Jakob Schwander, Universität BernOn June 19th CERN Council adopted the update of the "European Strategy for Particle Physics 2020". This document updates an earlier strategy paper that was adopted by the Council in 2013, just after the Higgs discovery in 2012. It identifies the medium and long-term priorities of fundamental research in particle physics and thus forms an important basis for the construction of the European research infrastructure. The implications of this strategy update for Swiss particle physics are answered by Rainer Wallny, Professor of Particle Physics at ETH Zurich and President of the Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP), the umbrella organisation of Swiss particle physics.
Immagine: ETHZ, SwitzerlandThe delta+ is a type of baryon, the family of sub-atomic particles to which the more well-known proton and neutron belong. A team of physics enthusiasts at the International School of Geneva is working intensively on these extremely unstable elementary particles. In September they will travel to Hamburg for an experiment at the renowned particle physics research institute DESY. They owe this extraordinary research trip to winning this year's “Beamline for Schools” (BL4S) competition at CERN.
Immagine: CERN, Switzerland
In dieser Folge haben wir uns mit Professor Ruedi Füchslin von der Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, kurz ZHAW, über Künstliche Intelligenz (Artificial Intelligence) unterhalten.
Cette année, 260 élèves de secondaire en provenance de 53 pays se sont penché∙es sur les épreuves de physique aux Olympiades européennes, EuPhO en abrégé. Le concours a eu du 21 au 26 juillet sous forme virtuelle.
Axions are elementary particles with extremely low mass. So far they exist only in the brains of theoretical physicists, nobody has observed them. Really? Measurement results at detector XENON1T in Italy make one sit up and take notice.
Teams of researchers from EPFL and University of Zurich are members of the LHCb collaboraiton and have made major contributions to the construction and operation of the detector
Claudia Merlassino was born in Genoa, studied physics in Milan and completed her doctorate at the University of Bern in October 2019, since then she has been doing research at Oxford University in the UK. At the age of 28, the Italian experimental physicist has already made a remarkable journey as a researcher. She is now receiving the PhD prize in Swiss particle physics - among other things for her findings in the context of the most massive of all elementary particles.
La finale des olympiades de physique aurait dû avoir lieu en mars. En raison de la pandémie du coronavirus, les examens ont été reportés au 6 juin et organisés en ligne. Les 24 finalistes ont testé leurs connaissances depuis la maison. Le suspense était à son comble lors de l’annonce des résultats le 27 juin.
19 Giugno 2020, 12:00
When analyzing data from the XENON1T detector for dark matter, a signal excess was observed. The UZH researchers do not yet know for sure where this unexpected signal comes from. They say the origins could be relatively banal, but they could also indicate the existence of new particles or hitherto unknown properties of neutrinos.
To recognise the International Day of Light 2020 and the 60th anniversary of the laser, the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) publishes a detailed report by René Salathé (EPFL) to record the development and milestones in laser science from 1960 to 1980 in Switzerland.
This media update is part of a series related to the 2020 Large Hadron Collider Physics conference, which took place from 25 to 30 May 2020. Originally planned to take place in Paris, the conference was held entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ALICE, CMS and LHCb collaborations present new measurements that show how particles containing charm quarks can serve as “messengers” of hadrons and the quark–gluon plasma, carrying information about these forms of matter. This media update is part of a series related to the 2020 Large Hadron Collider Physics (LHCP2020) conference, taking place 25–30 May 2020.
La tomografia ad emissione di positroni (PET) aiuta i medici a rilevare il cancro e molte altre malattie. Un team di ricercatori guidato dal professor Günther Dissertori sta lavorando a una nuova generazione di scanner per PET che in futuro potrebbero essere di grande utilità nella ricerca farmacologica e nel trattamento dei malati di Alzheimer. L'innovazione tecnica si basa, tra l'altro, sulla ricerca fondamentale al CERN.
FCC - queste tre lettere rappresentano la visione di un nuovo acceleratore circolare che potrebbe essere costruito presso il laboratorio europeo di fisica delle particelle CERN a Ginevra. Con questo obiettivo a lungo termine, cinque anni fa i fisici svizzeri hanno fondato l'iniziativa di ricerca CHART. Ora è disponibile il dimostratore di un potente magnete. Se i test hanno esito positivo, verrà raggiunto un primissimo passo verso progressi decisivi nelle infrastrutture per la ricerca di base, ma anche in applicazioni come, ad esempio, strumentazione innovativa per terapie mediche.
The T2K Collaboration has published new results showing the strongest constraint yet on the parameter that governs the breaking of the symmetry between matter and antimatter in neutrino oscillations.
Scientists at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) have spent around ten years building the Spectrometer / Telescope for Imaging X-rays (STIX). Since 10 February, the research instrument is travelling to the Sun. It will provide accurate measurements of the solar atmosphere and the solar wind and will also cover the polar regions of the Sun that cannot be observed from Earth.
With its European particle physics laboratory CERN, Geneva attracts many researchers to Switzerland. This was also the case with François Drielsma (28). In a doctoral thesis supervised by Prof. Alain Blondel (University of Geneva), the Belgian-born scientist investigated a completely new way to build a particle accelerator.
Particle physicists from all over Europe are currently discussing the future of European particle physics, when the current ring accelerator LHC will be decommissioned around 2035. Next May, the decision could be taken launch technical and financial feasibility studies for the construction of a new, even more powerful particle accelerator.
This week’s drafting session marks final discussions for the update of the European strategy for particle physics
Elementary particle physics and the large-scale CERN research facility have repeatedly inspired artists to engage with modern scientific research. The latest example is the movie 'Les Particules' by French-Swiss filmmaker Blaise Harrison (39). In this art piece scientific research serves as an escape and dream world for an adolescent.
Lesya Shchutska (pronuncia: Schutska) ha 33 anni e già professore di Fisica delle particelle elementari presso l'Istituto Federale Svizzero di Tecnologia di Losanna (EPFL). "Al momento non riesco a immaginare di fare qualcosa di diverso dalla fisica", afferma il ricercatore, che si occupa di particelle che finora esistono solo nelle menti dei fisici teorici.
UNESCO celebrates every year on 16 May the International Day of Light (IDL). It is a global initiative that provides an annual focal point for the continued appreciation of light and the role it plays in science, culture and art, education, and sustainable development, as well as in fields as diverse as medicine, communications, and energy.
At the occasion of the Swiss Geoscience meeting in Fribourg in November 2019, the ACP Award for Atmospheric Research was presented to Daniele Nerini for his PhD thesis “Ensemble precipitation nowcasting: limits to prediction, localization and seamless blending”.
Under the motto "still 24 experiments until Christmas" 24 entertaining physics experiments are offered to do yourself, which are provided in a German and an English version.
In deep underground tunnels of former mines near the Japanese Alps, teams of scientists with Swiss participation are researching various types of elementary particles. Over the next few years, powerful research instruments will be put into operation with which scientists want to discover the nature of neutrinos. The hoped-for results could lead to solving of deep puzzles in our understanding of the universe.
Nessuna particella elementare attraversa più frequentemente l’universo degli schivi neutrini. Le ricerche delle piccolissime particelle quasi senza massa è al centro dell’odierna fisica delle particelle elementari. Probabilmente il contributo più importante degli ultimi vent’anni alla conoscenza del neutrino lo dobbiamo al rivelatore giapponese Super-Kamiokande in cui diversi gruppi di ricercatori Svizzeri sono coinvolti. Una visita alle montagne in Giappone.
Pickel, Schaufel und Spatel gehören zwar noch immer zur archäologischen Feldausrüstung, immer öfter kommen aber bereits im Feld oder spätestens bei der Auswertung im Büro High-Tech Geräte zum Einsatz. Tragbare Röntgenfluoreszenz-Analysatoren sind ein Beispiel solcher Geräte, die zur grossen Freude archäologischer Konservatoren zerstörungsfreie Analysen ermöglichen.
Graben oder nicht graben? Das ist oft die Frage! Die Entscheidung müssen Archäologen aber nicht dem Zufall überlassen. Geophysikalische Prospektionen und die Fernerkundung erlauben sehr weit gehende Einsichten in den Untergrund, bevor die erste Schaufel Erdreich bewegt wird. Die dadurch gewonnenen digitalen Daten bilden die ideale Grundlage, um einen antiken Fundort durch gezieltes Anlegen von Grabungsschnitten möglichst detailliert zu erkunden.
Wollen Archäologen ohne zu graben den Untergrund erforschen, dann greifen sie zu geophysikalischen Methoden. Bei Luftbildauswertungen und elektrischen Widerstandsmessungen in Studen kam Erstaunliches zu Tage – aber auch die Erkenntnis, dass ein Grossteil des römischen Vicus undokumentiert dem Kiesabbau zum Opfer gefallen ist.
Neutrinos are ubiquitous yet elusive particles that could shed light on the early evolution of the universe. As one of the world’s major laboratories for neutrino physics, Fermilab partners with leading organizations around the globe to get a firmer grasp on these subtle particles.
The two researchers from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Geneva share this extraordinary distinction with James Peebles, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University in the United States. The Nobel Prize was awarded to the Swiss scientists for the discovery in 1995 of the first planet outside our solar system.
Le Prix Nobel de physique a été décerné conjointement aux astrophysiciens genevois Michel Mayor et Didier Queloz ainsi qu'au Canado-Américain James Peebles. Ils sont distingués pour leur contribution à la compréhension de l'évolution de l'univers.
Nel 2025, l’esperimento 'Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment' (DUNE) prenderà il via nel nord degli Stati Uniti d’America, vi lavorano i fisici che aspirano a conoscere meglio il neutrino – la particella elementare ancora misteriosa. Una componente importante dell’esperimento DUNE è in costruzione all’Università di Berna.
Die ANG geht unter die Podcaster
Michał Rawlik, scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) is awarded the CHIPP Prize 2019. The 29-year-old researcher receives the award for his doctoral thesis on the electric dipole moment of the neutron. The experiment he co-developed could one day help answer the question of why there is much more matter in the universe than antimatter.
Communications of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) are published three times a year and are intended primarily to the members of the society. They contain information about the society, event announcements, as well as series of articles on various topics.
The PhD Prize of the Swiss Society of Crystallography (SGK/SSCr) is awarded to Dr Luzia Germann for her thesis "Investigation of Solid State Reactions of Molecular Functional Materials by in situ X-ray Powder Diffraction". The award ceremony will take place during the society's Annual Meeting, Sept. 4, 2019 at EPFL Valais in Sion.
La semaine dernière, cinq jeunes en provenance de la Suisse ont participé aux Olympiades internationales de physique, qui se déroulaient du 7 au 15 juillet 2019 à Tel Aviv. Ils ont été récompensés par deux médailles de bronze et une mention honorifique.
The 69th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting dedicated to physics just ended. We had a great week of vivid discussions between 39 Nobel Laureates and 580 young scientists from 89 countries most of them Physicists but not only.
Cinq lycéens suisses se sont glissés dans la peau d'un physicien. Après un examen expérimental et théorique, trois d'entre eux ont reçu une mention honorable.
A labyrinth of mirrors, a shiny pot, countless cables and digital displays. Visiting Matteo Fadel at his workplace at the University of Basel, he first takes us to the laboratory where he tracks strange quantum phenomena. Somewhere in the midst of all this apparatus, several hundred atoms are trapped and brought into a state that still causes physicists a lot of headaches today.
Controlling the amount of phosphate in cells, the processes involved in catalysts, land use in Madagascar and a paradox of quantum physics – these are the topics for which the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) has awarded the Prix Schläfli 2019 to the four most important insights gained by young researchers at Swiss universities. Murielle Delley (Chemistry), Matteo Fadel (Physics), Rebekka Wild (Biology) and Julie Zähringer (Geosciences) receive the prize for the findings arrived at in their dissertations. For the first time, six of the candidates for the Prix Schläfli in Physics were also selected to participate in the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
I rifiuti radioattivi provenienti dai reattori nucleari possono prendere un tempo molto lungo a decadere. Il Plutonio-239 ha un tempo di dimezzamento – che è il tempo impiegato dalla metà degli atomi considerati a decadere – di non meno di 24’000 anni. Ma questo è niente in confronto al tempo di dimezzamento del gas nobile Xenon-124, come è dimostrato da un gruppo di ricercatori internazionali con collaboratori provenienti dall’Università di Zurigo.
A partire da 2026, le prestazioni dei grandi esperimenti al laboratorio Europeo di fisica delle particelle, il CERN, a Ginevra, saranno aumentate notevolmente. I lavori di preparazione per l’upgrade del grande acceleratore LHC e dei vari esperimenti è in pieno fermento. Un importante contributo viene dall’Università di Berna, dove il dottorando Armin Fehr (di 26 anni) e i suoi colleghi stanno lavorando su una componente dell’esperimento ATLAS. Questa componente renderà possibile acquisire i dati alla frequenza grandemente aumentata prevista dal 2026 in poi.
Das Projekt Event Horizon Telescope (EHT, dt. Ereignishorizont Teleskop) hat zum Ziel, die ersten Fotos der Umgebung der schwarzen Löcher M87* im Virgo-Cluster und Sgr A* (Sgr = Sagittarius = Schütze) im Zentrum der Milchstrasse zu machen.
CERN in Geneva is the leading particle physics laboratory worldwide. Large particle accelerators based on the most innovative technologies are used there for fundamental research. One year ago, the innovation park “PARK INNOVAARE” in Villigen (AG) launched, together with CERN, the BIC of CERN program: it supports start-ups and high-tech micro-companies using CERN technologies for commercial applications. These days the second call for proposals has started.
The Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences have been requested by the Confederation to prepare roadmaps for research infrastructures for the various scientific fields. These roadmaps will provide a basis for decision-making on the allocation of federal funding for costly research facilities over the period 2025–2028. SCNAT is responsible for implementing this new procedure within the Swiss Academies, and Secretary General Jürg Pfister believes that it offers the scientific community an opportunity for wider involvement.
The LHCb collaboration at CERN has seen, for the first time, the matter–antimatter asymmetry known as CP violation in a so-called D0 meson. LHCb is one of the four large experiments performed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) with Swiss participation of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and University of Zurich.
Fünf junge Schweizer haben sich für die Internationale Physik-Olympiade vom 7. bis 15. Juli in Tel Aviv, Israel qualifiziert. Sie gewannen Gold an der 23. Schweizer Physik-Olympiade 2019.
La forza di gravità ci accompagna in ogni momento della nostra giornata – dalla mattina, quando ci alziamo dal letto, fino a tardi la sera quando stanchi morti cadiamo sul materasso. Sebbene nessuna altra forza condizioni le nostre vite tanto quanto la gravità, essa ci rimane quasi sconosciuta. Molti scienziati nel mondo stanno cercando di svelare i segreti della gravità. Uno di questi sta conducendo le sue ricerche nel cantone Argau: la 32enne fisica delle particelle Anna Soter.
The CHIPP Prize is to reward annually the best PhD student in Experimental or Theoretical Particle Physics. In the evaluation, emphasis will be given to the quality of PhD scientific work and to its relevance within the student's research group, as well as to novel ideas brought up by the candidate.
The Periodic Table of Chemical Elements is one of the most significant achievements in science, capturing the essence not only of chemistry, but also of physics and biology. 1869 is considered as the year of formulation of the modern concept of the Periodic System by Dmitri Mendeleev (and others). 2019 is the 150th anniversary of this formulation and has therefore been proclaimed the "International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (IYPT2019)" by the United Nations General Assembly and UNESCO.
À une époque où beaucoup de pays d'Europe se refermaient sur eux-mêmes, la Suisse ouvrait une station de recherche à vocation internationale au Jungfraujoch. Plusieurs prix Nobel y ont travaillé. En 2019, la station se voit honorée de deux récompenses qui la consacrent Grand site historique des sciences. La Société européenne de physique lui rend honneur dans le domaine des sciences physiques et l'Académie suisse des sciences naturelles dans celui de la chimie.
Professor Laura Baudis (U. Zurich) was elected Chair of the SAC by representatives of the member countries of the group which coordinates research in Astroparticle Physics in Europe. Professor Teresa Montaruli (U. Geneva) was elected Chair of the General Assembly.
Cementificazione, declino della diversità del paesaggio e della biodiversità, paesaggi montani segnati dal cambiamento climatico: per proteggere meglio i paesaggi della Svizzera e gestirli in modo più sostenibile, dal 2019 l'Accademia delle scienze naturali (SCNAT) riunisce diverse attività nel nuovo Forum Paesaggio, Alpi, Parchi. Si crea così la più grande rete di conoscenze sui paesaggi naturali e culturali della Svizzera Il presidente è Felix Kienast dell'I stituto federale di ricerca per la foresta, la neve e il paesaggio WSL. Anche in altre unità della SCNAT assumere nuovi presidenti.
Nella primavera del 2020, la comunità europea della fisica delle particelle deciderà una nuova strategia europea che evidenzi gli obiettivi strategici a lungo termine in questo importante settore della ricerca fondamentale. Nel dicembre 2018 gli scienziati svizzeri - organizzati dall'Istituto svizzero di fisica delle particelle / CHIPP - hanno formulato il loro contributo alla nuova strategia europea. Günther Dissertori - professore al Politecnico federale di Zurigo, membro del Consiglio direttivo del CHIPP e Nuovo delegato scientifico della Svizzera al Consiglio del CERN - spiega i punti principali del contributo strategico svizzero.
Prof. Ernst Meyer (Uni. Basel) is the new President of the Platform MAP starting in 2019. He succeeds to Prof. Friedrich-Karl Thielemann (Uni. Basel), who served for six years (2013-2018) as President and stays in the Presidium for another three-year term.
Die Mitteilungen der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Bern enthalten wissenschaftliche Beiträge oder die Referate ausgewählter Vortragszyklen, die Jahresberichte der NGB, die Sitzungsberichte der Bernischen Botanischen Gesellschaft und weitere Informationen.
In the first workshop in April, the status of the field was reviewed and discussed. The CHIPP input for the discussion of the ESPP update was then agreed during the second workshop held in September. This document describes the CHIPP position on the ESPP update focused on the scientific issues.
APPEC strongly supports and encourages the prospects of an even stronger synergy between Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology with Particle Physics. Areas of synergy between the above domains are identified: dark matter and dark energy; multi-messenger astrophysics, with the recently achieved discoveries of gravitational waves and the extraordinary opportunities also offered by gamma-ray and neutrino observatories for the exploration of powerful accelerators of the universe; the current neutrino precision program in relationship with cosmology, that promise either an unprecedented confirmation of the two standard models of Particle Physics and Cosmology, or a gate to new physics beyond both. These synergies include R&D on photosensors, cryogenic and vacuum techniques, optimisation of large scale infrastructures (civil infrastructure, vacuum, cryogenics) and of their governance and long-term operation, computing strategies for analysis and handling of large volumes of data, and policies leading to open science. Their development also requires grounding fundamental science within society, including, outreach and education. In view of the above synergies the present document introduces and briefly discusses four recommendations related to the role of PP in i) the dark matter searches; ii) the multi-messenger astronomy,in particular the 3G GW experiments (ET); iii) the neutrino physics; iv) the creation of a European Center for AstroParticle Theory (EuCAPT).
Input to the European Strategy process edited by K. Kirch∗, L. Rivkin, C. Ru ̈egg, M. Seidel with contributions from A. Amato, A. Antognini, M. Calvi, R. Eichler, W. Hajdas, M. Hildebrandt, M. Kenzelmann, B. Kotlinski, A. Knecht, B. Lauss, S. Ritt, S. Sanfilippo, P. Schmidt-Wellenburg, A. Signer
Neutrinos are electrically neutral and very light elementary particles, which interact only weakly with other matter and are therefore difficult to observe. From 2025, a new neutrino experiment in the US aims contributing to a better understanding of the neutrinos. At the University of Bern physicists are currently working on the prototype for a detector to be used in the upcoming experiment.
IPPOG, the International Particle Physics Outreach Group, is a collaboration comprising 27 signing member-organizations (countries, laboratories, experiments) whose goal is to maximize the impact of education and outreach efforts related to particle physics.
PiA offers 24 entertaining physics experiments to do yourself again this year. Due to the great interest from abroad, physics will be available in English during Advent, just like last year.
Laetitia Laub was born and raised near Lausanne. She studied mathematics and physics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Since August 2017, the 24-year-old junior scientist is writing her doctoral thesis in theoretical physics at the University of Bern. In her thesis she deals with the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon and the reaction of this particle in the magnetic field. "Many people are currently working on this theoretical problem with the aim of further reducing the calculation error of the dipol moment. This is also because a better experimental value for the dipole moment will be probably found at Fermilab in the US and J-Parc experiment in Japan soon, " says Laetitia Laub.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 with one half to Arthur Ashkin (USA) and the other half jointly to Gérard Mourou (France) and Donna Strickland (Canada). Ashkin invented optical tweezers that grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells with their laser beam fingers. Mourou and Strickland paved the way towards the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created by mankind.
At the end of August, climate change and the future energy supply of Switzerland were among the topics of several keynote speeches at the Annual Meeting of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) and the Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP) in Lausanne. Maurice Bourquin, former professor of physics at University of Geneva, gave a keynote lecture about the ongoing transformation of the Swiss energy system. Professor Bourquin was also Rector of the University of Geneva (1999 - 2003) and President of the CERN Council (2001 - 2003). The 77 year-old scientist’s speech was titled: “Thorium-based systems – A new direction for nuclear waste elimination and energy production.” In the interview that follows, Professor Bourquin explains why he still believes in nuclear power.
In order for physicists at CERN to carry out their experiments for the understanding of matter, the large particle accelerator LHC must be operated with the utmost precision. Ensuring this precision both now and in the future was the overriding goal of a doctoral thesis that Claudia Tambasco recently completed at the EPFL in Lausanne. For this work, the young researcher was today (28.08.2018) awarded the prize of the Swiss Institute of Particle Physics (CHIPP) at a ceremony in Lausanne.
Geneva, 28 August. Six years after its discovery, the Higgs boson has at last been observed decaying to fundamental particles known as bottom quarks. The finding, presented today at CERN by the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), is consistent with the hypothesis that the all-pervading quantum field behind the Higgs boson also gives mass to the bottom quark. Both teams have submitted their results for publication today.
Am 22. August bringt die Schweizerische Nationalbank die neue 200-Franken-Note in Umlauf. Auf der neuen Banknote wird die wissenschaftliche Schweiz durch die Elementarteilchenphysik repräsentiert. Die Auswahl dieses Sujets ist Ausdruck des hohen Stellenwerts, den die teilchenphysikalische Grundlagenforschung in der Schweiz geniesst.
The latest COSPAR report (84 pages, English) writes about Swiss contributions in space research between 2016 and 2018. As a country that has been involved in the space odyssey from the start, Switzerland has been a substantial contributor to this import field of science.
Many Swiss physicists are now in Seoul (Korea) for the very prestigious conference ICHEP2018. We report here their latest findings and contributions to the conference.
Anyone who studies physics at the University of Zurich knows Lea Caminada for her lectures. Most of the time, however, you will not find the particle physicist on the Irchel campus, but at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen in the canton of Aargau doing research. There, the 36-year-old scientist develops sophisticated measuring instruments, which are then used at CERN for cutting-edge research. In a questionnaire, Lea Caminada gives an insight into her everyday life as an experimental physicist.
On 15 June, the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) in Geneva officially celebrates the upcoming upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). By the year 2026, the performance of the world's largest particle accelerator will be significantly improved by many technical optimizations in order to empower new insights into the nature of matter.
Swiss high school students participated at the second European Physics Olympiad in Moscow (Russia) from May 28 to June 1 this year.
ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN describe for the first time the interaction of the two heaviest elementary particles of the Standard Model. Members of the Department of Physics of the Swiss institutes: the University of Geneva, the University of Zurich (UZH) and ETH Zurich have been involved in the analysis in a leading manner.
Results from XENON1T, the world’s largest and most sensitive detector dedicated to a direct search for Dark Matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), are reported today (Monday, 28th May) by the spokesperson, Prof. Elena Aprile of Columbia University, in a seminar at the hosting laboratory, the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS), in Italy.
The “Alexander Friedrich Schläfli Prize” of the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT) is one of the oldest prizes in Switzerland. Since the first awarding in 1866, 108 young talents in different natural science disciplines have been distinguished.
Five of Switzerland’s best-in-physics high school students will take part in the European Physics Olympiad, which will be held at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia from May 28 to June 1 this year.
OPERA collaboration reports the observation of a total of 10 candidate events for a muon to tau-neutrino conversion, in what are the very final results of the experiment.
Students of the Freies Gymnasium Bern (FGB) with focus on mathematics and physics visited the European particle physics laboratory CERN in Geneva on 24 April.
In 2021, the European research satellite Euclid will be launched into space. With Euclid, scientists from Switzerland and 15 other countries want to gain a better understanding of dark matter and dark energy. These two 'things' fill large parts of the universe in the view of modern astronomy, but neither dark matter nor dark energy have been directly observed so far. Researchers at the University of Zurich have prepared a complex computer simulation of dark matter in preparation for the Euclid mission. This mission is of great interest not only to astronomers and astrophysicists but also to particle physicists since particle physics is on the quest for the discovery of the nature and structure of dark matter with its own experiments.
If you are looking for unknown things, you usually do not know which way to go to find the unknown. This dilemma is also faced by scientists who want to advance into previously unknown areas of elementary particle physics. And yet they have to find a consensus on which experiments promise the greatest gain in knowledge in the next years and decades. For this purpose, the Swiss particle physicists are currently working on a new research roadmap.
These days, the Swiss-Italian documentary 'CERN and the sense of beauty' will be screened in selected Swiss cinemas. The work of the Italian director Valerio Jalongo combines images from the particle physics research laboratory with nature photographs and with works of art, leading to a subjective and idiosyncratic meditation on knowledge and beauty.
The large particle accelerator LHC at CERN in Geneva enables scientists to get precious clues to understand the nature of matter in the next two decades of data taking. The power and performance of this huge research apparatus needs to be constantly improved for this task. A silicon sensor, which the junior researcher Claudia Merlassino is currently testing at the University of Bern, is planned to be used from 2025 in a large LHC experiment: ATLAS.
CERN in Geneva is the world's largest facility for the study of fundamental particles. The equipment that usually serves science can sometimes be used for practical purposes too. That's for example the case for the protons emerging from the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB): they are used in the large particle accelerator LHC for scientific experiments. The protons can also be used to produce isotopes that are useful in radiation medicine. Such isotopes are produced in the recently opened facility CERN-MEDICIS.
On 9 January 2018 the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium (APPEC) will officially launch its new Strategy 2017-2026 in Brussels. The strategy is addressing the main scientific issues of astroparticle physics in the upcoming decade. Teresa Montaruli – physics professor at the University of Geneva and the representative of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and of the CHIPP association of professors in the APPEC General Assembly – gives an outlook on the key messages of the new strategy.
In Räumlichkeiten der Alten Kantonsschule in Aarau wurden die "ANG Forschertage" zum ersten Mal durchgeführt.
Grazie all’Università di Ginevra gli astrofisici svizzeri possono partecipare a IceCube – l’enorme esperimento situato al polo Sud concepito per studiare i neutrini. Gli scienziati vogliono con IceCube trovare l’esatta origine dei neutrini presenti nell’universo. Per più di due anni la giovane ricercatrice Tessa Carver (24) sta collaborando all’esperimento.
Quest’autunno all’Istituto Paul Scherrer comincerà la costruzione di un nuovo esperimento di fisica delle particelle per determinare il dipolo elettrico del neutrone. Rimpiazzerà il precedente esperimento, che al momento ci ha fornito la misura alla lunga piú precisa degli ultimi anni e la cui analisi dei dati è ancora in corso. Il nuovo esperimento, disegnato in collaborazione tra il dottorando di ETH Michal Rawlik, puó rivelare delle caratteristiche del magnetismo inimmaginabilmente piccole. Un risultato positivo dell’esperimento potrebbe aiutare a spiegare perché c’è tanta piú materia nell’universo rispetto all’antimateria.
Researchers of the Baryon-Antibaryon-Symmetry experiment (BASE) at CERN have achieved a remarkable success: They have determined the magnetic moment of the antiproton with a previously unattained accuracy. The measurement is more precise than the best measurement for the magnetic moment of the proton.
La collaboration BASE au CERN publie dans la revue Nature une nouvelle mesure du moment magnétique de l'antiproton, plus précise que celle obtenue pour le proton. C'est probablement la première fois que des physiciens réalisent une mesure plus précise pour l'antimatière que pour la matière, selon les chercheurs.
Trois Américains ont reçu mardi le Nobel de physique pour avoir validé une incroyable prédiction d'Albert Einstein: l'existence d'ondes gravitationnelles créées par les trous noirs. Cette révolution scientifique a propulsé notre connaissance de l'univers jusqu'au coeur du Big Bang.
Nel 2012, il bosone di Higgs è stata scoperto dagli esperimenti ATLAS e CMS del CERN. Da allora, si sente spesso dire che il Modello Standard è un modello completo per la fisica delle particelle. "Non è del tutto vero!" dice Alain Blondel, professore di fisica all’Università di Ginevra. C’è ancora il neutrino, che, da quello che sappiamo oggi, non rientra perfettamente nel Modello Standard. Ci sono notizie eccitanti pubblicate recentemente riguardo questa inafferrabile particella: Nuove osservazioni dell’esperimento T2K in Giappone forniscono le prime indicazioni che chiariscono una delle domande centrali della fisica moderna: Perché l’universo consiste solo di materia mente l’antimateria manca totalmente ?
La semaine des Prix Nobel 2017 commence lundi à Stockholm. Le prix Nobel de médecine ouvrira le bal, suivi, mardi, du Nobel de physique, puis de chimie mercredi. La Suisse compte trois lauréats potentiels.