Last July physicists at CERN announced they had found a particle that looked a lot like the elusive Higgs boson, a particle thought to give mass to some elementary particles. After poring over two and a half times more data than was available in July, CERN announced today that their particle is still a spot-on match for the Higgs. Brown physicists David Cutts, Ulrich Heintz, Greg Landsberg, and Meenakshi Narain are active participants in the Higgs search. Gerald Guralnik is one of the theorists who first predicted the particle’s existence in 1964. Heintz offers his thoughts on what this latest announcement means, and where we go from here.
A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shows that molten rock may have been present on the Moon more recently and for longer periods than previously thought. Differentiation — a settling out of rock layers as liquid rock cools — would require thousands of years and a fluid rock sea at least six miles deep.
Statistical physics offers an approach to studying climate change that could dramatically reduce the time and brute-force computing that current simulation techniques require. The new approach focuses on fundamental forces that drive climate rather than on “following every little swirl” of water or air. And yes, there’s an app for that.
Understanding the source and orientation of light in light-emitting thin films — now possible with energy-momentum spectroscopy — could lead to better LEDs, solar cells, and other devices that use layered nanomaterials.
Digesting lignin, a highly stable polymer that accounts for up to a third of biomass, is a limiting step to producing a variety of biofuels. Researchers at Brown have figured out the microscopic chemical switch that allows Streptomyces bacteria to get to work, breaking lignin down into its constituent parts.
Jay Dickson and Jim Head have gathered time-lapse photography and other data about the sustained salinity of Antarctica’s Don Juan Pond, the most saline natural body of water on earth. Their findings, published online in Scientific Reports, suggest that such ponds could be possible on Mars.
A protein associated with neuron damage in Alzheimer's patients provides a superior scaffold for growing central nervous system cells in the lab. The findings could have clinical implications for producing neural implants and offers new insights on the complex link between the apoE4 apolipoprotein and Alzheimer's disease. Results appear in the journal Biomaterials.
Ridges in impact craters on Mars appear to be fossils of cracks in the Martian surface, formed by minerals deposited by flowing water. Water flowing beneath the surface suggests life may once have been possible on Mars.
In the 1960s, Nobel laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes postulated that someday researchers could test his theories of polymer networks by observing single molecules. Researchers at Brown observed single molecules of DNA being drawn through nanopores by electrical current and figured out why they most often travel head first.
All of planet Earth seemed to follow the rover Curiosity’s harrowing descent to the surface of Mars. Curiosity’s early discoveries showed that liquid water once flowed on the Martian surface, but the big discoveries still lie ahead, including Mount Sharp, three miles high. Ralph Milliken, a participating scientist on the Curiosity mission, has returned to Brown and talked with Kevin Stacey about what lies ahead for Curiosity.
