Science-George

2025 was a terrible year for me, so I'm hoping that 2026 won't let me down.

#ATLASpaper: Search for direct pair production of top squarks in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV and 13.6 TeV in events with two oppositely charged leptons using the ATLAS detector (arXiv:2603.16191) arxiv.org/abs/2603.16191

How freaking gorgeous is our universe?

Status: I am monitoring the situation.

The Arizona desert community of Martinez Lake hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking the record for the highest March temperature ever recorded in the U.S. apnews.com/article/heat-w…

@Science_George @abc15 @TheProfMeredith 😉 Humans have inhabited what is now called Phoenix, AZ for over 13,000 years. As America's fifth largest city, behind New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston, It will be interesting to see where the population goes as things heat up over the next two decades.

Still funny...

American (lack of) education has a great deal to answer for…

"Hey, Mom, someone's lying on the internet again!" - me (probably)

There’s something truly magical about this place. Waiting inside this building is a moon rocket, about to make the trip to the launch pad before leaving Earth.

What a stunning photo.

Sky Harbor Airport reached 101° at 2:59 pm MST. This sets a new record high temperature for the month of March. Stay tuned for the official high temperature post. #azwx

The Lab communicates with a range of stakeholders. To continue to inspire, engage and connect across a variety of fields, we recognize the importance of reaching out and checking in. Share your thoughts & take the PPPL communications survey ➡️ bit.ly/4uALTnh by April 30.

@O_Ceallaighs @abc15 Also known - as I learned from @TheProfMeredith - as a monument to man's arrogance.

@abc15 @Science_George But it's a dry heat 😎

ANOTHER HEATER! ☀️ Phoenix just hit 105º, making it the hottest day in March on record. It's also the earliest we've reached this temperature. The previous record was set on April 20, 1989. tinyurl.com/3vz56m8j

RFK Jr.’s war on scientific expertise destroyed 27% of agency's advisor panels arstechnica.com/health/2026/03…

Pittsburgh Public Schools will be closed for three days, and compel "asynchronous" remote learning, because of the NFL Draft. Since the city will have a lot of visitors this will "ensure students can continue learning safely and effectively." Unreal. publicsource.org/pittsburgh-pub…

#CMSPAS: A measurement of the Higgs boson mass in the diphoton decay channel with the CMS detector (CMS-PAS-HIG-24-007) cds.cern.ch/record/2957193 #HiggsBoson

BONUS Hadron = a subatomic particle composed of quarks and held together by the strong force. Hadrons are categorized into two main families: baryons (made of three quarks, e.g. protons and neutrons) and mesons (made of one quark and one antiquark, e.g. pions and kaons).

7/7 If you want to dive deeper, here are other official sources: LHCb Outreach detailed article➡️lhcb-outreach.web.cern.ch/2026/03/17/obs… LHCb Moriond 2026 presentation slides➡️indico.in2p3.fr/event/39055/co… The full scientific paper is still in preparation.

6/7 On top of that, this is the first important physics result to come out of the upgraded LHCb detector since 2023. When you step back and look at the big picture, it’s actually pretty neat. A simple detector upgrade — meant to make the experiment more powerful — has delivered a long-awaited heavy cousin of the proton. It has cleared up a puzzle that lasted twenty years, and given us another solid check on how the strong force really behaves deep inside matter. Every single new particle we manage to find helps us understand a little better the invisible glue that holds our visible world together.

5/7 Theory predicted the two should have almost identical masses, since up and down quarks behave very similarly. For more than 20 years physicists had been searching for the down version. Now, LHCb has finally observed the Ξcc⁺ at the mass theory expected after the 2017 discovery. So why does any of this actually matter? Each new hadron (see the BONUS below) we discover gives physicists fresh, real-world data to test and improve the calculations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) — the theory of the strong force that holds quarks together to make protons, neutrons and basically all the ordinary matter in the universe.