By Allison Kubo Hutchison Left: Glowing basaltic eruption in Iceland taken at night (image: Áslaug Arna Sigurbjörnsdóttir / twitter). Right: Grey ash clouds rise into the atmosphere over St. Vincent (image: University of West Indies Seismic Research Center / twitter). In Iceland, where we lay our scene, lava spills orange and black tendrils from three fissures in Geldingadalir. Meanwhile across the globe in St. Vincent ash rises into the sky in a large plume from the La Soufrière volcano. Both eruptions were preceded by numerous earthquakes which warned volcanologists that magma was coming toward the surface. However, these two eruptions have very different behaviors and thus very different hazards (though both do have hazards). On St. Vincent 16,000 people have been evacuated from their homes meanwhile hundreds gather to watch the fissures in Iceland. The eruption at St. Vincent is what volcanologists call explosive behavior. The ash plume rising 20,000 feet high is produced
By Hannah Pell On 7 April 2021, physicists at Fermi National Laboratory announced the first results of their Muon g-2 (“g minus 2”) experiment, which have hinted that muons may behave in a way not predicted by the Standard Model, a self-consistent yet incomplete theory of fundamental particles and their interactions. You can picture a muon like a tiny, spinning top; they act as if they have an internal magnet, twirling around in response to an applied magnetic field. The strength of a muon's internal magnet is known as the “ g-factor ,” a dimensionless quantity characterizing the magnetic moment and angular momentum of a particle. The experiment is named “g minus 2” because both the theoretical value and new experimental average of the muon magnetic moment are slightly greater than 2. However, they are not equivalent; although the difference between them is incredibly small, it has been observed to be anomalous . Image Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab. The Muon g-2 experiment