Life & Physics

So, is the above (a) a publicity shot from the stage adaptation of The Usual Suspects (b) four (one current, three previous) Heads of Physics and Astronomy at UCL. (more…)

Clive Lewis MP hosted a drop in session about the funding crisis in the science and technology research council (STFC). We had a busy two hours talking to MPs and Peers. I think and hope we had some impact. There is so much going on in the world, and Westminster, these days that it sometimes feel like whistling in the wind trying to make the case for particle physics and astronomy, and for…

Thanks to Hetan Shah and Margot Finn on Bluesky, I came across this article by Gillian Tett in the Financial Times. It’s a discussion about the rhetoric and reality of AI adoption in business with, as you’d expect, a focus on the financial sector and its regulators. The bit that caught my attention was the description of a New York financier evaluating, for the first time, summer interns who had…

When Catherine Heymans, Simon Williams and I gave evidence to the House of Commons Science, innovation and Technology select committee a few weeks ago (seems like years to be honest), we were set some homework. Kit Malthouse MP asked about the career destinations of people trained in particle physics, astronomy and nuclear physics (PPAN), and Chi Onwurah, the chair, said Maybe you could write…

Higgs bosons produced with high transverse momentum are a key probe for new physics. An event display of a possible Higgs boson event showing two back-to-back jets. One jet shows a clear separation of energy deposits (in green) which is a sign of the Higgs decay. Since the discovery of the Higgs boson back in 2012, one of the most important things we have been doing at the CERN Large Hadron…

UCL is 200 years old this year, and there is a lot to celebrate. Physics and asronomy have been here since the start. Continue reading Some history of UCL and particle physics

A break from funding crises… We are in the last physics run of the Large Hadron Collider before we go into a long shutdown to upgrade the beam intensity. Courtesy of ATLAS, the experiment I work on, you can see the status of the accelerator here: Event Counter Info. And we have an Event Counter running, telling you how many high-energy proton collisions have happen, and roughly how many Higgs…

After my previous post on the parliamentary committees last week, I think it is worth highlighing this blog post by Lucien Heurtier. Lucien is a postdoctoral research associate in theoretical physics at King’s College London. As well as having a valuable perspective on the committee meetings I discussed, he was also one of the group of fellows and early career researchers who signed letters…

Well, the fight to stop the decimation of particle, astro and nuclear physics continues. The House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology select committee session I mentioned in the previous post happened. The above picture is one of the lighter moments in what was an intense couple of hours. I thought the committee were impressively well informed and on point in their questioning, both…

Having had a very interesting meeting at the House of Lords a couple of weeks ago, this Wednesday I will be giving evidence on science funding to the House of Commons Science, Innovation and Technology Committee. Big changes are being implemented in the way UKRI allocates taxpayers money to fund research in national laboratories and universities. While the intentions may be good (and the total…

Back in the Guardian after a long break. Sadly it is because of bad news. More like 2008 that 2012. “If plans by the UK’s science funding body go ahead, we won’t be able to benefit from Britain’s membership of Cern and other large international projects” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/16/cuts-physics-research-uk-scientists-britain-cern

I shared the open letter Peter refers to on other channels, but this issue is important enough to keep on about it, and his post definitely worth a read. Funding Diamond Open Access

A quick post to advertise a new preprint my collaborators and I put on the arXiv today. It is called “Local Baryon Number at the LHC” and is by me, Joe – one of my PhD students, or Doctoral Researchers, as they are now officially called at UCL – and Pavel and Hridoy, two theory collaborators I’ve enjoyed working before1, from Case Western Reserve2 University. I will explain briefly what we have…

Ok, two of these posts in a row but it’s the holidays… Sbagliato is a Negroni when you put sparking wine (in this case Blanquette de Limoux, see below) instead of gin. Sbagliato is Italian for “wrong”, but feels right at the mo. The Jalisco Flower is tequila, elderflower, pink grapefruit and Blanquette again. Tastes nice, although I’m drinking the short red one myself. Blanquette de Limoux is…

There is actual physics going on my life but right now there is also this. Gin, crème de violette, red vermouth, orange & angostura bitters. Yum. I’d would say it counts as a variation on the negroni, and you might say “What’s the point in varying perfection”. But it’s a good one, worth a try IMO.

As I am sure everyone is well aware by now, UCL won a share of an enormous prize yesterday1. After half a century of valiant defeat and occasional failure to turn up, football really is coming home. We won the annual Bubble Chamber Football tournament (with a bit of help from some nuclear physics colleagues from Surrey and Liverpool). Photo credit Will Quinn, who should alo be in the…

A discussion on the future of particle physics is underway. When is it not, you might ask? And it is a good question, there is always something like this going on (hence the “part 94” in the title, which is a bit of a Private Eye in-joke). But this is a moment when the intensity of the discussion is rising. Detail from from “A Map of the Invisible“ Continue reading The future of particle…