Great news from CERN

In a press release, CERN informed us that beams have returned to run in the LHC (see here).  These are great news as, from now, we know that they are back on track after the severe setback happened last year.So, great physics awaits us in the next years and I take this opportunity to wish this people the best of lucks for the years to come.

Water on the Moon!

NASA announced today that LCROSS has indeed found water on the moon and in a significant quantity. The announcement is here.

The view of the floor of Cabeus as seen through the LCROSS near-infrared camera. The fresh crater made by the Centaur impact is indicated. Credit: NASA

This is a wonderful result both for the achievement and the technique NASA used. The meaning for the future explorations in space is made brighter by this finding and the reason is that, having significant reserves of water on the moon, building a base for future missions in the solar system is made easier. So, in a situation where funding cuts are the most common actions governments accomplish, such a successful mission proves that smart people always find a way toward the aims. On the other side, we hope that, when economical difficulties in US will be overcome, NASA will be again properly funded to realize the most significant goals in space missions.

Vitaly Ginzburg died

Vitaly Ginzburg,  a Russian physicist that produced a key breakthrough in the understanding of superconductivity together with Lev Landau, died yesterday. He was 93. He left an interview at Physics World quite recently. You can find it here. Ginzburg was awarded a Nobel prize in physics in 2003 along with Abrikosov and Leggett. Ginzburg-Landau equation will stand forever as a key element in condensed matter physics and partial differential equation theory.