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B anomalies: hopes, disillusions, and future prospects.

Within the Standard Model (SM) the basic constituents of matter are the three "families" (two quarks and two leptons) with different quantum numbers, that completely determine the properties of these particles under the three fundamental forces…

Departed giants of theoretical physics

July 23rd 2021 was a sad day for the world of theoretical physics, which witnessed the passing of three giants of the field: Steven Weinberg, Toshihide Maskawa and Miguel Virasoro. Weinberg and Maskawa were awarded Nobel Prizes for their…

The NNLO frontier

The potential of a post-LHC collider to explore for hints of new physics relies on technological advancements but also on theoretical developments that will allow very accurate background determinations. With a concensus growing for a lepton…

How Many Fundamental Constants Does It Take To Explain The Universe?

At a fundamental level, our Universe is made of particles, forces, interactions, and the fabric of space and time. Spacetime forms the ever-evolving stage on which the play of the cosmos unfolds, while the particles are the players. They can bind…

The rise of the axions!

Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn worked together in developing what is today known as the Peccei-Quinn symmetry; a mechanism that addresses the strong CP-violation that consequently led to the invention of axions and inspired an intense experimental…

Searching for axions: old and new ideas

QCD, the theory of strong interactions allows the violation of CP symmetry that would result in a non-zero value for the neutron electric dipole moment. Current measurements constrain the neutron EDM to be one trillionth of the size predicted by QCD…

Why is fundamental physics worth researching?

What's the point of investing fortunes into answering questions in advanced physics? 100 years ago, we might have asked the same questions of Schroedinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, and the other pioneers of the quantum revolution. After all — what…

The Lifetime Frontier

It bear repeating that there must be physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM). The triumphant discovery of the 125 GeV Higgs Boson sharpens the Hierarch Problem, with naturalness suggesting new particles at the TeV scale. A multitude of interlocking…

Where is Supersymmetry?

The original ideas The original ideas for introducing supersymmetry dates back in the 1960s when, in the context of hadron physics that was found to be approximately spin-flavour independent, a symmetry between mesons and baryons was proposed. These…

Can ‘useless’ knowledge be useful?

A tomography machine developed at CERN. Machines like this are used in PET (positron emission tomography) scanners for medical imaging. Technology to improve these techniques is being investigated at CERN. (Image: Maximilien Brice/ Samuel Morier-…

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