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theorydad.bsky.social
Dad and occasional particle theory professor
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The NAS report on the future of particle physics is out. Strong endorsement (#1 priority) is a muon collider. nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2883...

The National Academy of Sciences particle physics report begins w/ Rec 1: The US should host the world’s highest-energy particle collider around the middle of the century. This requires the immediate creation of a national muon collider R&D program to enable the construction of a demonstrator... 🧪⚛️

MAJOR PARTICLE PHYSICS REPORT RELEASE ⚛️🧪 The National Academies particle physics decadal report is out! Read read! (I was a member of the committee that wrote this report but resigned during drafting bc of a conflict of service w/my HEPAP appointment.) nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2883...

Huge news, and a confirmation of what NSF staff have suspected/feared for a while.

Vamos Carlos!!!

I have no idea how this ends up, but the derivative is definitely non-zero!

It feels like every movie about a dystopian future is turning into a quasi documentary too quickly

How bad will it be? Catastrophic. Proposed cuts to #NSF, #NIH, and #NASA will set the US R&D landscape back 25 yrs+, cause economic and job loss now, and undermine innovations to come. But, this is the WH's *proposed* budget. Speak up now before it is too late. (inflation adjusted $-s below)

The amount of damage this does to US science is beyond comprehension.

Beautiful blue sky at Fermilab! I’m always happy to visit and give the w&c seminar. Today’s talk will be on understanding the interplay of precision and energy at the LHC and beyond. 🧪⚛️

Knicks in 7 LFG!!!!

The U.S. used to be about bringing in the best talent from all over the world, but rather than coming up with an efficient immigration process for students, this seems to be the exact opposite with potential devastating consequences for the country www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

Very cool Van Gogh exhibition at the NY botanical gardens just started, I highly recommend it for all ages

I haven’t seen it mentioned here yet, but we have gotten word from CERN that both Mary K Gaillard and Jonathan Rosner have died. Their paper with Ben Lee was the entry to charm physics for so many of us, but each had separately a large impact on particle physics.

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

It was a great privilege to “hood” two of my doctoral students today, Artemis and Matthew. They survived their PhDs as well as a new first for me, a fire and evacuation during the doctoral ceremony!

Very difficult—but important—to get this kind of specific detail, even when the influence seems obvious: "In the resulting depositions, top NIH officials said that a representative of DOGE, Rachel Riley, provided the officials with at least five lists of specific grants to cancel."

Nerd fashion of Summer 2045

Some of the CDC's main channels for communicating urgent health information to the public have gone silent.

I love this photo of the Fermilab Theory group in 1974 including Mary Gaillard and Shirley Ann Jackson. 👩‍🔬 ⚛️ Source: pubs.aip.org/physicstoday...

Northwestern has not received any NIH funds since March. No written communication about why or what can be done. Thank you Ben Singer for raising awareness at #ATS2025

Did not expect Jon Rahm to fold so badly down the stretch, congrats to the undisputed #1 Scottie Scheffler for winning the PGA championship apple.news/A7saqtENQTHe...

I’ve never seen anything like this: a murmuration of black flies. The rain led to them all leaving the grass and trees. “Come to Wisconsin they said. The flies aren’t that bad they said” 😜

New: We have the list of ~190 Harvard NSF grant terminations from internal agency sources. About $148 million intended funds killed. Over 1/3 are from the MPS directorate—roughly 75 math and physics grants.

LETS GO KNICKS ONE MORE HALF

Let’s go Knicks!!!

🧪 How can (largely) the same congress that voted in 2023 to authorize doubling the NSF budget now sit idle while the agency is strip-mined, all while loudly fretting about competition from China? www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Glances at text notification. It’s the female faculty group text… Oh fun what’s up “Bad news Thursday instead of bad news Friday…” www.science.org/content/arti...

Holy crap the Knicks win again!!!

Mitchell Robinson is making Shaq look like he was gifted from the free throw line

While €500M is not that much in general, if directed towards young professors, it can drain the US talent pool. 🧪 www.reuters.com/science/eus-...

In light of the skinny budget (55.8% reduction), 6 past NSF directors and 7 NSB chairs have sent the House Committee on Appropriations a letter advising doubling the NSF budget. "We face a fork in the road. Do we want to win or concede the race for new knowledge and a competitive STEM workforce?"

Bad for science is definitely a conservative choice, this would destroy US science, hopefully Congress pushes back hard

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Update: After Friday's purge, per multiple internal sources, the number of awards terminated from NSF is 1040.

Great talk by @chrisquigg.com reminiscing back to meeting Fred Goldhaber for the first time, and how Fred influenced his career and some of the science that came out of it ⚛️🧪

George Sterman kicking off the Fred Goldhaber memorial symposium discussing some of Fred’s work on nuclear physics and multiparticle production. Fred’s career spanned an enormous range of physics topics being celebrated today🧪⚛️ scgp.stonybrook.edu/archives/45808

This Friday I'll give a colloquium at @nikhef.bsky.social, summarising the 263(!) inputs submitted to the European Strategy for Particle Physics. Important discussion for our international particle physics activities the coming years, or even decades! indico.nikhef.nl/category/40/