Friday Flyer - November 7, 2025
Spotlight on QuarkNet Listservs
Oh, those listservs. They form parallel main avenues of communication from QuarkNet Central along with this Friday Flyer. We try to use them judiciously, but sometimes the messages start to pile up. It might help if you know which listservs we have, what you should or should not sign up for, and what you may be missing. Maybe it will help if we define them a bit.
There are a few that most QuarkNet members will never see because they are really for staff and IT. Two of these are quarknet-developers and quarknet-sysadmins. The ed-qnetadvisoryboard listserv is what you think it is. On the other hand, almost everyone in the program belongs to one or more of these: ed-qnet-teachers, ed-qnet-mentors, and ed-qnet-alumni. The names make their functions pretty clear. Staff assign people to these listservs based on their functions in the program.
A little more specialized: cre-labusers. If you have a QuarkNet Cosmic Ray e-Lab account, you should be on this one, as that is what it is for. And the e-labs-help and e-labs listservs start from the the Cosmic and CMS e-Labs to go to people, such as our Cosmic Ray fellows, who can fill a help desk function.
Finally, if you are reading this and are not formally part of QuarkNet, you may be on the ed-qnet-flyer listserv for friends of and collaborators with our program who wish to get the Friday Flyer in their mailboxes. We love these people.
What now? Well, if you are getting spammed by emails that do not seem to pertain to you, you please check the email address from whence it came: you may be on a list that you do not need to be on. And if you are missing some vital information, you may have been accidentally removed or left off from a listserv on which you do belong. In either case, email Shane or Ken to inquire.
News from QuarkNet Central
World Wide Data Day (W2D2): Registration for W2D2 closes this coming Monday, November 10. If you have not yet registered, now is the time! The big day is November 20: We hope to see you then. Want more info? Check the website and the latest W2D2 Memo or email Shane or Ken.
International Masterclasses 2026: Fermilab-based International Masterclasses will be held March 1-28, 2026. Registration is open! We have an online form for Fermilab masterclasses, to be filled out by a single organizer of each masterclass. For all the news, go to the latest IMC circular.
Update on the Cosmic Ray e-Lab: According to our IT team, "The e-Labs are now back up. You may resume using them for cosmic ray and CMS analyses." Please give it a try - small stuff first, please - and let us know how it goes.
For the Calendar:
- International Cosmic Day 2025: The 14th International Cosmic Day will take place on November 13, 2025. Click here for more information, including how to register.
- World Wide Data Day (W2D2) is set for November 20, 2025. Registration is open until November 10.
- AAPT Winter Meeting 2026: The AAPT WM 2026 will be held January 17-19 in Las Vegas. The deadline for Early Bird Registration is November 14.
Physics Experiment Roundup
Life (and experimentation) at the forefront keeps popping on with odd happenings, and we don't just mean odderons. First, Phys.org gives us some neutrino news: a calorimeter that zooms in on the electron neutrino mass and IceCube looking for neutrino multiplets. Meanwhile, we learn from Nature that the T2K and NOvA experiments teaming up for a joint neutrino oscillation analysis. In Physics World we read about looking for off-shell Higgs bosons at ATLAS. You may recall that an off-shell particle is one that has, with correspondingly low probability, a mass quite far from the published mean value: think a Z boson coming in at 40 GeV instead of the invariant mass peak of the Z at 92 GeV. And then there are axions. The idea here, expressed in APS Physics, is of these super-low-mass, super-elusive (and, so far, hypothetical) particles to be produced adjacent to the the LHC proton beam, where they might collide and...something happens. Well, if it does, it will be some very interesting new physics.
Resources
We all like video resources, so let's start with some competing playlists. First, we have this collection from Perimeter Institute, which is a little extra cool for having some videos in French. (Call your Language Department!) Of course, this list of lists would not be complete without these offerings by Don Lincoln or a bunch of Even Bananas from Kirstie Duffy. Let's add this Brian Cox Lectures playlist as well.
But what about some solid, deep physics theory? There is this article from Phys.org about the beginning of the universe, including cosmic inflation requiring a bit of warmth. Want to get into the weeds? Try the Physics Review Letters article on the subject. Want video? Try Cosmic Inflation Explained by PHD comics or How Cosmic Inflation Flattened the Universe from PBS Space Time.
Just for Fun
Are you in a cartoon mood? We hope so, because we are seriously examining cartoons, Just for Fun. We'll start with a bike-and-bee physics problem by Paul Hewitt in The Physics Teacher and then go on to some XKCD: Here are another balloon (we had one last issue as well), earning an advanced degree, and more than you want to know about shielding. We're not done: a take on Einstein and a take on wishing to be Einstein.
Of course, some of the greatest cartoons are those that move - and no cartoon character moves faster than the Road Runner. Lots of physics there, for example: RR defying gravity, the RR pendulum lab, and Wile E. Elasticity.
QuarkNet Staff
Mark Adams: markadams74@gmail.com
Ken Cecire: kcecire@nd.edu
Spencer Pasero: spasero@fnal.gov
Shane Wood: swood5@nd.edu