🧪 🇨🇭 #IgNobel awards come to Switzerland as US unsafe for scientists
#HoppSchwiiz
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
10.03.2026 03:51
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🧪 🇨🇭 #IgNobel awards come to Switzerland as US unsafe for scientists
#HoppSchwiiz
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Cherry tree in Ueno Park
Hongo Campus of the University of Tokyo
My way to work this week crossed one of my favorite parks in Tokyo ;)
"The density required was far in excess of uranium.”
“...one of my Soviet colleagues suggested that, perhaps, the effect was due to regeneration of short-lived K mesons in a fly unfortunately trapped in the helium bag. We did a quick “back of the envelope” estimate of the density of the fly necessary to produce the effect."
“Upon learning of the discovery in 1964, the natural reaction of our colleagues was to ask what was wrong with the experiment. Or, if they were convinced of the correctness of the measurements, they asked how could the effect be explained while still retaining CP symmetry.” Jim Cronin, 1980
"Voyages of discovery can be made in new uncharted waters but also in the familiar bays close to port provided one has observing apparatus that can see familiar objects with detail greater than that previously possible.”
Teaching is a good excuse to read old Nobel lectures: “Most often experiments in physics are long and difficult. It takes some special tweaking of interest to make the commitment to a new area of research. The original motivation is, in the end, apt to appear naive.” Val L. Fitch, 1980
If you're in the Zurich area, join us for a special Schrödinger Colloquium on Monday. “From Atoms to Cosmos” will celebrate 100 y of Schrödinger equation, bridging chemistry, physics and cosmology. A surprise quantum dance event will follow in the Lichthof, with Priscilla Roeck & Killian Haselbeck
So far so good
Yes I should prepare my lectures for next week (semester start), I should read a PhD thesis, among others… but this was my main project for today - happy valentines ;)
Nice article, by Adam Begley, about Julian Barnes and his new book, Departure(s), in the @theatlantic.com “We must believe in love, just as we must believe in free will and objective truth.”
time ;)
Xenoscope, a tall xenon TPC, and its support structure
A new run with Xenoscope, a 2.6 m tall, two-phase xenon tome projection chamber, will start soon. Now the TPC is being reassembled and it looks almost like new ;-)
Muons are wonderful particles. Happy to be part of the new National Centre of Competence in Research "Muoniverse" www.muoniverse.ch, hosted by PSI & UZH. Muoniverse is one of the six funded new centres (www.wbf.admin.ch/en/newnsb/JE...), connecting science, engineering and arts. More details soon!
The energy spectrum of the first LEGEND-200 dataset, corresponding to 61.0 kg yr of germanium exposure, above the 39-Ar 𝑄_𝛽 =565 keV. The white histogram shows events passing quality and muon anticoincidence cuts and with energy deposited in one single HPGe detector. The main radioactive background contributors are indicated in green. The gray and red histograms show the subsets of events passing the PSD cut and additionally the LAr anticoincidence cut, respectively. The inset shows a close-up around the region of interest for 0𝜈𝛽𝛽 decay with finer binning. The expected contribution from the 2𝜈𝛽𝛽 decay of 76-Ge corresponds to the solid blue line. The events used to set a constraint on the 0𝜈𝛽𝛽 decay rate are contained by the analysis window, marked in green. Only two significant 𝛾 peaks (shaded areas) are expected within this window, and the corresponding 10 keV wide energy regions are excluded from the statistical analysis.
The first LEGEND-200 results are now published in @physrevlett.bsky.social journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
No evidence for neutrinoless double beta decay,
with a lower limit on the 76-Ge half-life of 1.9 x 10^26 y. This corresponds to an upper limit on the Majorana ν mass of m_ββ < 75 - 200 meV
Using the Hubble Space Telescope 🔭, a team of astronomers have discovered a starless, gas-laden dark matter cloud believed to be a relic from the dawn of galaxy formation - the first verified discovery of its kind anywhere in the Universe ☁️. Check it out: https://ow.ly/e0WV50XT9Og #astronomy
You need to align with Polaris and then you can use the guiding scope for corrections
I meant photons (but also photos ;)
Plenty of photos here last night, but mostly from the moon ;)
It moves! We can watch as the Kepler supernova remnant changes over a quarter of century in X-rays from Chandra. #aas247
chandra.si.edu/photo/2026/k...
Sydney Opera House
This spectacular image of the planetary alignment of Saturn, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter above the Sydney Opera House was taken in the early morning around April 21, 2022, and featured as NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on April 26, 2022
Our colleague Katherine Wright, who began as an editor for PRL and went on to explore her passion as a great writer for
@physicsmagazine.bsky.social, passed away this fall from cancer, far too young. Here is a tribute to her: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
If you're in Zurich, join us for today's Physics Colloquium at the @ethz.ch campus: Prof. Teresa Montaruli, from Université de Genève, will talk about "The Future of the Highest Energy Astrophysics with Gamma-Rays and Neutrinos"
colloquium.phys.ethz.ch/programme/cu...
Congratulations Sera!
Group picture in the Irchel Lichthof
New group picture taken yesterday (Sana is missing)
Thank you Nikita, very kind :)
I certainly enjoyed the meeting and I learned so much! Thank you again for the invitation :)
Beautiful day in Zurich for the start of the 10 Years of mesoSPIM workshop at the Careum this morning: www.ema.uzh.ch/en/register/... - organised by @mesospim.bsky.social
Study for life
