This was an interesting interview with Physics World. Explaining the relevance of a critical point in layman's terms …

https://physicsworld.com/a/hints-of-a-boundary-between-phases-of-nuclear-matter-found-at-rhic/

A couple of back-to-back features in the recent Rice Magazine with YouTube videos in which you can see me enthusiastically waving my hands. 👋😀👋

• The Heart of Matter: Rice researchers are part of a decades-long, international scientific experiment peering into the beginnings of the universe.
• Brilliang Minds, Different Perspectives: The Rice Global India Initiative brings two worlds together to create a powerful research ecosystem.

Here's a great article from a recent CMS Newsletter on how to build your own detector at home, using LEGOs or a 3D printer, if you happen to have one idling at home … (i now know I really need one!)

https://cms.cern/news/build-cms-detector-home?mtm_campaign=Newsletter&mtm_kwd=news_engage

source: Rice News by Marcy de Luna

‘Oscars of Science’ Breakthrough Prize honors Rice physicists

Faculty and alumni share award for pioneering research at CERN

An international team of physicists, including Rice University’s Paul Padley, Frank Geurts, Karl Ecklund, Wei Li and Darin Acosta, this week was awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for research on the Higgs boson and the exploration of nature at the shortest distances and under the most extreme conditions.

The prize, which honors the world’s top scientists in fundamental physics, life sciences and mathematics, was awarded to more than 13,000 physicists who contributed to the four large experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), including the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The Rice researchers were recognized for their pioneering work in particle physics, including precise measurements of Higgs boson properties that confirm the symmetry-breaking mechanism of mass generation and their studies of the quark-gluon plasma, a state of extremely hot and dense matter that existed shortly after the big bang.

“This recognition underscores the power of international collaboration in scientific discovery,” said Padley, professor of physics and astronomy. “To be part of the team helping unlock nature’s fundamental secrets is deeply rewarding.”
The CMS experiment, one of four major LHC detectors, played a pivotal role in verifying the mechanism by which fundamental particles acquire mass through interaction with the Higgs field. Breakthroughs by the CMS team include precise measurements of the Higgs boson’s properties, the discovery of rare particle interactions and new insights into symmetry breaking — a fundamental aspect of the standard model of particle physics.
Their work also offers a window into the extreme conditions that existed moments after the big bang. While the Higgs boson’s discovery was announced in 2012, uncovering its complete characteristics remains an active and ongoing scientific pursuit.


Numerous Rice students, postdoctoral researchers and alumni contributed to the project, including Antony Adair, Bora Akgün, Austin Baty, Ulf Behrens, Zhenyu Chen, Osvaldo Miguel Colin, Sven Dildick, Sarah Freed, Parker Gardner, Maxime Guilbaud and Iason Krommydas.
Additional contributors include Matthew Kilpatrick, Arun Kumar, Andre Govinda Stahl Leiton, Jiazhao Lin, Pedro Fernandez Manteca, Ben Michlin, Ted Nussbaum, Radia Redjimi, Jamal Rorie, John Rotter, Wei Shi, Benjamin Tran, Zhoudunming Tu, Shuai Yang, Zaochen Ye, Efe Yigibasi, James Zabel, Yousen Zhang and the late Jay Roberts.
The Breakthrough Prize, often called the “Oscars of Science,” was founded in 2012 by tech leaders including Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, Anne Wojcicki, Julia Milner, and Yuri Milner. Open to all physicists whether theoretical, mathematical or experimental, the prize recognizes those advancing our understanding of the universe’s most profound mysteries.
The $3 million prize is shared among all recipients. The prize money supports grants for doctoral students from member institutions to conduct research at CERN.
“The questions these laureates are asking are among the deepest questions there are about the workings of life, the nature of the universe and the abstract landscapes of mathematics,” Yuri Milner said. “It’s inspiring to see scientists seeking and finding answers to these questions.”

Preparations for RHIC Run 25 are in full swing. In the past week(s), the superconducting magnets are all lowered to the temperatures where we can start to use liquid helium for the last step to 4K. In the status plot, below, you can see how each of the sectors sequentially sees its temperatures lowered to about 70-80K. Liquid helium will do the rest, and by March 23 we expect to see the full RHIC ring at 4K operating conditions.


Meanwhile, we are preparing the detectors of the STAR experiment. For starters, we make sure that we can ramp up the solenoidal magnet (the S in STAR) and flow the flammable gas in our tracker (the T in STAR), called the TPC. Without actual beam collisions we are able to set up our detectors to trigger for cosmic rays, i.e. the muons that are the decay products of energetic protons hitting the earth's atmosphere, leading to large particle showers that include many pions (the lightest mesons). These pions subsequently decay into muons (and neutrinos, which the STAR detector does not see). Even muons don't have eternal life, but thanks to special relativity (and their high velocity) we can still see them as they zap through our detector before turning into electrons. The video below shows our detector registring single muons. If you look carefully then you can see some of the tracks have some curvature. That's the magnetic field acting upon the charged particles! You also see that some tracks appear broken up in pieces. Well, that's why we start this testing well ahead of our operations using beam collisions: we are using these tracks to check each and every piece of our detectors!

Click on the picture below to see a ~45second GIF of incoming cosmic rays.