Milky Way's Big Bang

(mvillanu) wrote in message . com...
[snip]
Vanni, for the purposes of a discussion between us
two, I *am* an astrophysicist.

I don't need to ask anyone.


May I ask what kind of research you are involved in over there at Upton?
Anything promising that we can look forward to in the next few decades or so?

My research is a mixed bag, really. I'm a theorist.

Recently I've done a lot of phenomenology of relativistic heavy ion
collisions connected with the accelerator program at bnl.

I've also done some hypernuclear physics connected with the program
here; in the past I've done some particle physics.

My opinion about the ion collisions is a bit out of the mainstream.
I'ld claim there is no really solid evidence of quark-gluon plasma
in the data so far. It's not a particularly popular opinion with some
people, as one might guess.

There are lots of interesting things upcoming. In particular, the
turning on of LHC is bound to give a measurement of the Higgs mass,
and a lot of people are expecting supersymmetry to finally be found.
One can expect also that the next generations of neutrino experiments
will be built, and will begin pinning down the nature of the
oscillations in greater detail. There is a chance thereby to
learn more about CP violation, which is one of the open problems
in the standard model. Neutrino physics will become particularly
important if supersymmetric partners are not found at LHC.

In most of these areas Brookhaven is not going to be a direct
player, but there are groups here actively collaborating on
all of them.

Cheers!

David