Horizon Science Channel

A quick overview of the Dark Energy Survey to study the properties of Dark Energy. Image from T. Abbott and NOAO/AURA/NSF

So, I had planned to go in a different direction at the start, but there was too much back story. This was the result. I talk about some of the interplay between dark matter, dark energy, gravity, and inflation. I think I will need to revisit this topic at some point in the future to do a better job. But it will need multiple segments... Oh well. Enjoy! Image is from the Fermilab Image Gallery. The sculpture is called "Broken Symmetry". It is located near the west entrance to the laboratory campus. It is orange when viewed from one side, black from the other. The three legs are offset when viewed from this angle, but are symmetrical when viewed from above.

I give an overview of some high pressure physics techniques and then go into some detail about the discovery of room temperature superconductivity using some of these techniques. Image from Salamat Lab

OK. So, it isn't really physics, but since I work in this discipline, and since it won the physics Nobel Prize, we'll call it "honorary physics". I talk about the design and early results of NASA's Kepler Mission. I was a member of the science team for this mission (through the Participating Scientist Program). Thumbnail is of Kepler 11, taken from the NASA media gallery.

Catching up with a friend after a couple months of radio silence. We cover some recent science headlines, and the fact that our localities are now crawling out from the ... health-related ... restrictions that have been in place for the last year++.

A quick description of the KATRIN experiment, currently running in Karlsruhe Germany. It is designed to measure the masses of neutrinos using a giant, blimp-looking spectrometer. The image is not photoshopped. Image from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KATRIN media gallery).

A description of the effects of nuclear physics in the early universe. Specifically, the brief period of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis which produced the light elements in the universe and how their abundances relate to the overall matter density in the universe.

A review of some physics experiments that probed the existence of extra spacial dimensions at small scales. They also were instrumental in constraining some of the properties of dark energy. The primary research group is the Eot-Wash group at the University of Washington: https://www.npl.washington.edu/eotwash/ The three papers, in particular, that we explore (one is a recent result from a Chinese group) are below. They all appeared in Physical Review Letters. https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.11761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-ph/0611184.pdf https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.051301 Image of Calabi-Yao manifold.

This video gives an overview of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and many of its key results—especially its early results from the first few years of observations. Image is M51 from SDSS

This is a brief overview of the Michelson-Morley experiment, which showed that there was no aether through which light waves would propagate. This experiment was instrumental in the development of modern physics—special relativity in particular. Thumbnail from Alain Le Rille—shown on wikipedia

I outline the discovery of dark energy through the observation of distant Type Ia supernovae. The discovery paper led to the Nobel Prize in physics and has been cited 13,000 times—that's a lot. Image from NASA HST

A discussion about energy and climate change with Richard Muller (professor emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley). Professionally an astrophysicist, he has been working for the last decade on climate change, air pollution, and—most recently—nuclear waste storage. Climate, pollution, and COVID analysis: http://berkeleyearth.org/ Nuclear waste storage: https://www.deepisolation.com/ Image from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This video discusses the axion, the reasons behind the theory, and the early experiments from Brookhaven, Fermilab, Rochester, and Trieste. I also present my own experiment looking for similar particles. At some point, I'll do a video where we examine other constraints on the axion. Image from Fermilab Image Gallery.

I discuss the design and operation of the ADMX experiment (currently at the University of Washington). This is the premier experiment with the goal of detecting dark matter axions. Image from the Millenium simulation.

This video outlines more recent solar neutrino experiments, neutrino oscillations, and the resolution to the Solar Neutrino Problem. The results of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory were crucial for confirming how the Sun shines. Thumbnail image from the Kamioka Observatory.

This video outlines the early experiments to measure neutrinos from the Sun. I discuss the motivations for studying them, and the problem that arose when we only saw half of what we expected to find. The resolution to this Solar Neutrino Problem is the topic for another day.

A discussion about the hint of new, Charge/Parity-violating physics at the Large Hadron Collider experiment LHCb. Discovering such CP-violating processes is key to understand the origin of matter in the universe. We talk about the nature of the experiment, the data that were gathered, and the implications for the observed result. This is the first half of our conversation. The second half is a separate video about the Muon g-2 result from Fermilab. Thumbnail Credit: ID: LHCb-PHO-GENE-2008-005-1 Credit : Peter Ginter 05 Sep 2008

An overview of the early experiments to detect and characterize the cosmic microwave background. Emphasis on Penzias and Wilson at Bell Labs and NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). There is a brief mention of Boomerang, WMAP, and Planck. Included is a discussion of the implications of the results of these studies.

A discussion about anticipated science from the Mars Perseverance rover with Dr. Elisabeth Hausrath from the UNLV Geoscience department. Special emphasis on the sample return aspects of the mission. Dr. Hausrath is a member of the science team for the mission.

There has been some controversy about this question. An experiment at CERN is running a test to see if anti-Hydrogen falls differently in a gravitational field than regular Hydrogen. This experiment would use antimatter directly. However, earlier gravity experiments to test the Weak Equivalence Principle claim to have already excluded this possibility. I go through their arguments here. Image is the row of trees outside of Wilson Hall at Fermilab, taken from the Fermilab photo archives.

This video shows the energy consumption for the US through 2020 and compares it to the 2019 numbers. It uses the flow chart produced each year by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Details and historical charts can be found at: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/

A discussion with Josiah Neeley from the R Street Institute about energy, electricity, Texas, and the power outage of February 2021.

The second part of my discussion with Sam Gregson talking about the anomalous signal from the Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab. The experimental measurement of the muon magnetic dipole moment disagrees with the best estimate from theory by more than four-sigma—a value that starts turning heads in the particle physics community. If confirmed, this would be strong evidence for a newly discovered physical process or particle. Given that 95% of the energy density of the universe is of unknown origin, such results are of great interest to scientists from around the world. Image Credit: Fermilab

This is a brief description of the Cavendish experiment, conducted in the late 1700's, to measure the mass (density) of the Earth. It is equivalent to measuring the value of Newton's constant, G.

Off-the-cuff overview of a set of physics experiments that measured the quantum states of Earth's gravitational field using a beam of neutrons. Some relevant references: https://www.nature.com/articles/415297a/ https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0301145 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0808.1362.pdf