The D0 collaboration has just finished a nice new analysis of 1 inverse femtobarn of Run II data, looking for direct production of Higgs bosons with a decay to W boson pairs. More

Many of us look forward to a cold beer at the end of a hot summer day, but physicist John Page can bring beer in to work. For him, the bubbly beverage is a perfect medium for demonstrating a scientific technique pioneered by his group at the University of Manitoba. More

There’s been another Oscar in the news this week: Paralympic champion sprinter Oscar Pistorius, a.k.a. “the Blade Runner,” a double-amputee since he was a baby in South Africa. Pistorius was born without fibulae in both of his legs, which were amputated halfway between his knees and ankles just before his first birthday. He’s always worn prosthetics, taking his first steps on fiberglass pegs, and has always been highly athletic, playing rugby, water polo, tennis, even wrestling before taking up track and field after suffering a serious injury in rugby. More

While I’m a big believer in investing in alternative energy sources, I’ll go on record saying that I’m not nuclear power’s #1 fan. It’s nothing personal; some of my best friends are nuclear physicists. Nor am I hysterical about it; the word “nuclear” does not automatically fill me with fear and dread, because I’ve learned enough science over the years to understand the realities of the risks involved. Radiation might be invisible to the naked human eye, but there’s no reason to freak out over getting an MRI, for example. More

Chinese team grabbed the first place in the 38th round of the International Physics Olympiad held in the city of Isfahan, central Iran. More

0. Newtonian gravity is your high-school girlfriend. As your first encounter with physics, she’s amazing. You will never forget Newtonian gravity, even if you’re not in touch very much anymore.

1. Electrodynamics is your college girlfriend. Pretty complex, you probably won’t date long enough to really understand her.

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A tiny new moon has been discovered around Saturn, bringing the ringed planet’s total to 60. The moon is just 2 kilometres across and has been nicknamed “Frank” by scientists at Queen Mary University London, UK, who first noticed the moon in images from the Cassini spacecraft. More

ESA’s Venus Express and NASA’s MESSENGER booked an appointment at Venus late in the evening of 5 June, to look at the oddities of this mysterious planet in tandem for a few hours. Just a few weeks on, scientists from both teams are ready to present a first set of images. More

The Planck scale is where general relativity and quantum mechanics should clash. It is the realm of the unfeasibly energetic and the unimaginably tiny. It is where the laws of nature are expected to achieve their highest level of elegance and simplicity — and where speculation abounds. More