Hi everyone! Readers of this blog might enjoy some of the following recent multimedia by some well-known particle physicists.
- First, a podcast from Jim Gates of the University of Maryland about his path in Go Tell It on the Mountain (link to iTunes, link to mp3) from The Moth. The talk is from the 2008 World Science Festival, which will be held again this year in New York City in a month.
- Next, a very nice animated discussion with Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng from UC Irvine on PhD Comics. They discuss dark matter, particle physics, and the Large Hadron Collider.
- Along the lines of dark matter and particle physics, here’s a mission briefing from NASA on AMS-2, the “particle detector in space,” featuring principal investigator (and Nobel laureate for the discovery of the J/ψ particle) Sam Ting. Matt mentioned AMS-2 in his inaugural post. A lot of particle physicists are excited about AMS due to recent anomalies in the spectrum cosmic positrons and anti-protons that may be a result of dark matter interactions.
- Finally, some time ago I had a general-public-level post about Nima Arkani-Hamed‘s (and collaborators) work in scattering amplitudes. For those with a technical background who interested in learning more, his informal lectures to the Cornell particle theory group are now posted online: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5. For those who can’t get enough, there’s also an ongoing program at the KITP with lots of recorded talks. These links are at the level of theoretical physicists doing work in the field; for a general public version, see Nima’s messenger lectures.
