Articles & Interviews
07/04/2015Paper of the month: Planck 2015 results. XX. Constraints on inflationDid the early Universe undergo inflation, a period of extremely rapid, almost exponential, expansion? Since its development in the 1980s, the idea of inflation has been very appealing from a theoretical viewpoint, although solid observational evidence was still to be found. Recently, the Planck satellite released its full survey data, shedding some light on the question.
26/03/2015Paper of the month: A possible indication of momentum-dependent asymmetric dark matter in the Sun, by Aaron C. Vincent, Pat Scott, and Aldo SerenelliAn article by a former ESR has been featured in several popular science publications, including Physics World.
14/01/2015Paper of the month: Axion helioscopes update: the status of CAST and IAXO, by T. Dafni, F.J. Iguaz, on behalf of the CAST, IAXO collaborationsThe axion – a hypothetical light elementary particle – is among the most promising extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Not only does it solve a long-standing problem within the Standard Model, the strong CP problem, but it could also be the source of dark matter, a mysterious substance five times more abundant than the ordinary 'visible' matter in our Universe. This paper reports on recent results and future plans for the search of this particle. If they exist, axions should be produced abundantly in the sun and can be searched for with special telescopes such as CAST and IAXO.
16/12/2014Paper of the month: Search for short baseline νe disappearance with the T2K near detectorNeutrino oscillations have been confirmed in many experiments in the last two decades. Almost all the observed oscillations fit quite well in the standard three neutrino picture where we have electron, tau and muon ”type or flavour” neutrinos. Oscillations can occur as the flavour of the neutrino does not correspond to a distinct massive particle. The distinct mass-state neutrinos are the physical particles that move freely through space and are made up of a combination of electron, tau and muon flavour neutrinos. So if you observe a neutrino in flight, you might observe the muon component one time, and the electron component the next. It is this change of neutrino flavour over time that we call neutrino oscillations.
05/11/2014Paper of the month: Planck intermediate results. XXX. The angular power spectrum of polarized dust emission at intermediate and high Galactic latitudes by R. Adam et al.One of the most exciting news of this year was the recent claim from the BICEP2 experiment of an indirect measurement of primordial gravitational waves. The experiment is based in the South Pole and designed to measure the polarization of the cosmic background radiation, focusing on the so-called B-modes. These modes can give insight on the physics of early stages of the Universe. In particular, inflationary theories predict the existence of a gravitational wave background which in turn can be seen nowadays as B-modes of polarized cosmic radiation. Unfortunately, there are other sources of B-modes, such as synchrotron radiation, gravitational lensing or polarized thermal emission from diffuse galactic dust.
17/10/2014Giorgio Arcadi discusses neutrinos and dark matter- 01/10/2014Paper of the month: Background model systematics for the Fermi GeV excess by Francesca Calore, Ilias Cholis and Christoph WenigerThe Fermi-LAT Space Telescope looks deeply inside the high energy cosmos providing a detailed picture of the Universe's most extraordinary phenomena. Among its powerful discoveries (blazars, active galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, neutron stars and even high energy eruptions from our own Sun) the most surprising and challenging one is an excess in gamma-rays coming from the center of our Galaxy, that cannot be explained with the standard astrophysical background. What are these unexpected high energy messengers telling us?
09/07/2014Below you will find a recently published article about Invisibles. The article discusses the general topics of dark matter, dark energy and neutrinos, and the European efforts to research them. It also highlights the training nature of the network, which provides next generation scientists with the necessary skills to lead this quest for knowledge.
30/06/2014Public lecture delivered by Thierry Lasserre at the Palais de la Découverte, Paris, on Thursday July 10th.
27/06/2014Valentina De Romeri explains dark matter
26/06/2014Michele Lucente explains the history of neutrino research
16/05/2014Paper of the month: Solving the Milky Way Satellite Problem with Interactions between Cold Dark Matter and Radiation, by C. Boehm, J.A. Schewtschenko, R.J. Wilkinson, C.M. Baugh and S. PascoliIn this week’s paper of the month, we look at an article by a joint team from Durham University’s Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP) and Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC). In this study, the authors show that a long-standing problem in the otherwise extremely successful “cold dark matter” model, can be solved by softening the usual assumption that dark matter does not interact with ordinary light. Until now, simulations of galaxy formation by cold dark matter have predicted too many small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way and similar galaxies. By introducing a tiny interaction rate with photons — about a billion times smaller than ordinary matter, the authors show via the results of high-precision simulations that the predicted number of satellite galaxies from our best models can be brought in line with observations.
29/04/2014‘El Universo Invisible y los neutrinos’
22/04/2014Paper of the month: An unidentified line in X-ray spectra of the Andromeda Galaxy and Perseus galaxy clustersA line in the X-ray spectra of two astrophysical objects, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster, has been identified. This line cannot at the moment be attributed to either instrumental effects or known astrophysical processes. On the contrary, it is compatible with the signal expected for dark matter decaying into photons. Systematic uncertainties and current experimental limitation preclude the claim for a discovery and alternative origins, including detector effects and unknown backgrounds, cannot be excluded. Further observations are required to shed additional light on this potential discovery.
24/03/2014Jon Kaufman and Jorge Cham explain cosmic inflation to us in a comic strip.
13/03/2014Physicist Concha González García delivered a presentation on neutrinos to students of Colegio Blanca de Castilla of Palencia, Spain over a video conference on March 7, 2014.
07/03/2014Paper of the month: A Detailed Look at the First Results from the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) Dark Matter ExperimentThe LUX experiment is the most sensitive direct dark matter search experiment at the present time. Their first reported result shows no signal of dark matter, exhibiting an apparent conflict with other experimental results.
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