Behind the paper: CP violation in neutrino oscillations

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Presentation of final results of the oscillation analysis. Credit: Pieyre Sylvaineat

In 1967, Andrei Sakharov proposed conditions required in the early universe for generating matter and anti-matter at different rates, to explain the abundance of matter in our universe today. Charge-Parity (CP) violating processes are essential under these conditions. Measurements of the CP violation in quarks, first performed in 1964, are too small to explain the difference, and finding other sources of CP violation is an ongoing quest in the physics community. In April 2020, the T2K collaboration published a paper in Nature suggesting large CP violation in the leptonic sector, namely in neutrino oscillations. Some of the researchers involved in the project tell us their story.  Read more

What’s the difference between a supernova and a fork?

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What’s the difference between a supernova and a fork?

Francesca Chadha-Day is a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, studying particle astrophysics and axion phenomenology. She is also a comedian. Here, Fran writes for us about her experience of stand-up comedy.   … Read more

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What’s in our browser tabs? August 2019

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Welcome to our new monthly link round-up! As editors of physics journals, we love reading the latest research papers, but we also love a bit of lunch-break popular science reading. Here are some pieces that caught our eyes in August:  … Read more

Interactions: Ed Simpson and the 3d nuclide chart

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Interactions: Ed Simpson and the 3d nuclide chart

The nuclide chart is a staple of nuclear physics, visualizing the properties of nuclides arranged by their number of protons and neutrons. The chart appears in text books, talk slides and Lego™ form (in the Binding Blocks science outreach programme). The 3D Nuclide Chart is a web app put together by Ed Simpson (@SuperSubatomic on Twitter) of the Australian National University. The app lets users plot the nuclear data of their choosing (taken from published data tables), play around with the 3D viewpoint (or work in 2D), set colour schemes and fonts, and then export the visualization as a png file or export the relevant data. The results are rather pretty, and the app is easy to use.  Read more

Interactions: Chen Fang and the Materiae database

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Interactions: Chen Fang and the Materiae database

In theory, many ordinary materials can have exotic topological phases. But how can we find them? In 2018 a research group from the National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics in Beijing scanned 39519 materials to predict which phases of the already-known compounds might exhibit topological properties. These materials were summarised into an interactive database Materiae, where you can browse compounds containing particular elements, check if they have any topological phases and visualise their band structure.  Read more

Interactions: Conversation with Martijn van Calmthout

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Interactions: Conversation with Martijn van Calmthout

The theoretical physicist Sam Goudsmit had a remarkable life. Not only did he discover the electron spin with his colleague George Uhlenbeck (for which they did not receive the Nobel prize – to the surprise of many colleagues), he was also the scientific leader of the Alsos mission, the United States mission searching for the ‘German nuclear bomb’. After the war, in 1958, he launched the pioneering weekly Physical Review Letters, which became one of the top publications in science.  Read more

Interactions: Iulia Georgescu

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Interactions: Iulia Georgescu

Iulia Georgescu is the Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Physics. Previously, she was an editor of Nature Physics, where she managed to sneak in three original “Alice in wonderland” illustrations (1, 2, 3) and the self-declared best cover-line ever.  Read more

What is physics? Challenges and opportunities when working at the interface with other disciplines.

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What is physics? Challenges and opportunities when working at the interface with other disciplines.

This year’s Berlin Science Week kicked off with a diverse programme. Among many events, visitors could discuss the connection between art and astronomy or learn how new technologies can be inspired by nature, or participate in a panel discussion at the Springer Nature office. The panellists set out to find an answer on how we define physics today, and to map out the boundaries with other related areas such as chemistry or biology.  Read more

Science without borders: A view from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

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The campus of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research around the time of inauguration of its new buildings in January 1962 in south Bombay (now Mumbai). Photo courtesy of the Archives of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.

After seventy years of the government of independent India nurturing scientific enterprise, even in the face of criticism of its investment in the fundamental sciences, it is a good moment to review the story of what many regard as the prized jewel of them all – the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which was founded in 1945 by the physicist Homi Bhabha with the help of the Dorabji Tata Trust. We are treated to a visit of this famous institute and its history in the book Growing the Tree of Science, Homi Bhabha and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Oxford Univ Press, New Delhi 2016) written by Indira Chowdhury. The reference to a growing tree in the title came from a Presidential Address by Bhabha in 1963 at the National Institute of Sciences of India: “A scientific institution… has to be grown with great care, like a tree.”  … Read more