Public Outreach

Giving two free lectures 6/20,27 about gravitational waves

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For those of you who live in or around Berkshire County, Massachusetts, or know people who do… Starting next week I’ll be giving two free lectures about the LIGO experiment’s discovery of gravitational waves.  The lectures will be at 1:30 pm on Mondays June 20 and 27, at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, MA.  The first … Read more

LHC Starts Collisions; and a Radio Interview Tonight

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In the long and careful process of restarting the Large Hadron Collider [LHC] after its two-year nap for upgrades and repairs, another milestone has been reached: protons have once again collided inside the LHC’s experimental detectors (named ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE). This is good news, but don’t get excited yet. It’s just one small step. … Read more

Science Festival About to Start in Cambridge, MA

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It’s a busy time here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the US’s oldest urban Science Festival opens tomorrow for its 2015 edition.  It has been 100 years since Einstein wrote his equations for gravity, known as his Theory of General Relativity, and so this year a significant part of the festival involves Celebrating Einstein.  The festival kicks off tomorrow … Read more

Giving Public Talk Jan. 20th in Cambridge, MA

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Hope all of you had a good holiday and a good start to the New Year! I myself continue to be extraordinarily busy as we move into 2015, but I am glad to say that some of that activity involves communicating science to the public.  In fact, a week from today I will be giving a … Read more

Wednesday: Sean Carroll & I Interviewed Again by Alan Boyle

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Today, Wednesday December 4th, at 8 pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific time, Sean Carroll and I will be interviewed again by Alan Boyle on “Virtually Speaking Science”.   The link where you can listen in (in real time or at your leisure) is http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtually-speaking-science/2013/12/05/alan-boyle-matt-strassler-sean-carroll What is “Virtually Speaking Science“?  It is an online radio program that presents, … Read more

Sean Carroll’s Higgs Book Wins a Big Prize

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Congratulations to my friend and colleague Sean Carroll, blogger at Preposterous Universe!  For his book, The Particle at the End of the Universe, about the theoretical idea and experimental discovery of the Higgs field and its particle (the Higgs `boson‘), he has won the 2013 Royal Society Winton Prize!  Not the 3 million that you get … Read more

Freeman Dyson, 90, Still Disturbing the Universe

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I spent the last two days at an extraordinary conference, “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, celebrating the life and career of an extraordinary man, one of the many fascinating scientists whom I have had the good fortune to meet. I am referring to Freeman Dyson, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), whose career … Read more

Light-Hearted Higgs Questions From a High School Teacher

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So I got the following questions from a high school English teacher this morning, and I thought, for fun, I’d put the answers here for you to enjoy. Here (slightly abridged) is what the teacher wrote, and my answers:

I’ve turned my classroom into a video game to increase student engagement. In my gamified classroom, the villain is experimenting with/on the Higgs field. Your article on what would happen if the Higgs field was turned off answered a lot of my questions, but … I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me. I am sure these questions probably don’t have “real” answers, and are completely ridiculous, but I’d love to hear from you.

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