Patrick Meade

Patrick Meade

@theorydad.bsky.social

Dad and occasional particle theory professor

587 followers324 following255 posts

Fun trip to Fermilab to give a plenary on a FCC-ee future for CERN at DPF2026. FCC-ee + a US based muon collider could lead to a revolutionary century for science and technology!⚛️🧪

Group photo from our workshop 50 years of jets: celebrating the science of George Sterman, great multigenerational experience united by one particularly special individual! ⚛️🧪

Patrick Meade reposted

Breaking news: Multiple scientists who serve on an independent board established to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency were terminated from their positions Friday by President Trump.

washingtonpost.comTrump ousts National Science Board membersMembers of the independent board that guides the National Science Foundation said they received a notice from the White House that their position was being terminated.

In the context of the FY27 PBR it helps to go back to Robert Wilson’s famous testimony to Congress about funding for the NAL(Fermilab) in FY1970 and ask the natural question, why are there some people so hell-bent on tearing down so much of what makes this country worth defending?⚛️🧪

Patrick Meade reposted

Okay, NSF is for some reason under an appendix, but they do have directorate-level numbers. Cuts pretty much across the board, including zeroing out SBE? which I suppose is what would happen with a 54% cut. Also worth looking at those FY26 estimates... www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social

Strangely, there is no section for NSF, though they do have a topline number...

Patrick Meade reposted

More coverage of the move in Science. I had not realized the programs were managed (though had separate accounts) prior to 2003.

science.orgEnergy Department merges nuclear and particle physics programs, unsettling researchersIn spite of synergies, physicists worry both fields are being sidelined in favor of AI
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social

New: DOE is reorganizing the Office of Science, per email. Notably, it appears to be combining high energy physics and nuclear physics. Unclear if this keeps the funding pools separate. (I'll ask) Apologies for the low-res image; that's what they sent. On the right is the current org chart.

If well managed this amplifies the science and makes sure people focus on the interesting questions and technologies. If poorly managed this guts both programs. Fingers crossed for good management, there are interesting times ahead!

Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social

New: DOE is reorganizing the Office of Science, per email. Notably, it appears to be combining high energy physics and nuclear physics. Unclear if this keeps the funding pools separate. (I'll ask) Apologies for the low-res image; that's what they sent. On the right is the current org chart.

Patrick Meade reposted

Replying to @dangaristo.bsky.social

Turner, on the EPP report: It's going to stay fresh for 40 years. If there are bumps in the road for the first few years, we still have time to implement the vision.

Poignant and funny moment from CN Yang memorial, was Marilyn Simons recalling her and Jim’s friendship with him and still having the old dictionary the YITP gave Jim for the talks that started the connection of Physics/Math through YM theory(bc Jim was a bad speller😅) 🧪⚛️ @simonsfoundation.org

Interesting Yang anecdotes, he often is remembered for opposing Chinese particle colliders, but he actually wanted his institute to go into accelerator physics. Physics is an experimental science and the machines are becoming too big and so he thought it was imperative to come up with smarter ways⚛️🧪

Patrick Meade reposted

Such a cool way to show people the “invisible” microscopic world whizzing around them! ⚛️🧪

Tristan du Pree@tristandupree.bsky.social

Lecturing this week on particle accelerators and detectors, gonna make our own cloud chamber today 🧑‍🔬

Patrick Meade reposted

Patrick Meade reposted

You definitely want to learn to stop saying, "I am SO OLD!" long before the people to whom you're saying it just look at you in response with expressions that say, "I mean...yes."

The article is good but not sure it’s hard to know what to think about or look for, just hard to look resource wise/technologically🧐

Quanta Magazine@quantamagazine.org

Particle physics hasn't yet found the new physics needed to resolve its deepest mysteries. It’s hard to know what to think about or look for. But the most devoted particle physicists are thinking and looking all the same.

I'll go with hard. The existential questions about our universe and EWSB have only become sharper since the LHC, the problem is that only collider experiments are relevant for them generically. If the world were less myopic now we'd invest more in R&D, but accelerator breakthroughs take time/suport🧪

Natalie Wolchover@nattyover.bsky.social

First column for Quanta Magazine's new essay section, Qualia. I take stock of particle physics, a field in crisis. What happened, and what now? Commentary here from many angles. Please lmk your thoughts, or any tips or topic ideas I should look into. 🙏 www.quantamagazine.org/is-particle-...

Patrick Meade reposted

Sad to see C.N. Yang passed away, a legendary physicist who despite his achievements was also one of the most underrated physicists of the 20th century and could have won multiple Nobel prizes not just one. He put Stony Brook University on the map and left an indelible impact on the YITP ⚛️🧪

Patrick Meade reposted

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

This isn’t what the article nor what the players said. Definitely abhorrent behavior by some US fans(also turns out it wasn’t thrown but knocked out of someone’s hand), but we don’t need to embellish the stories either.

Sad to see JoAnne Hewett stepping down as lab director of BNL. I think having a positive vision for a national lab is under appreciated in modern times, and JoAnne definitely brought that when she came.

Patrick Meade reposted

Somewhere between outsourcing and crowdsourcing, gravitational wave researchers got 1,000 participants on Kaggle to create the best algorithm to identify continuous GWs (shed by a swiftly tilting neutron star). Top 10 submissions reduced compute by 1–3 orders of magnitude. arxiv.org/abs/2509.06445

Patrick Meade reposted

Geoff Bennett: You say that poetry is not useful, and that's exactly why we need it. Why? David Duchovny: "We want to get educated to be able to work, to have a job of some kind, which is great and it's necessary. But we've lost sight of educating a mind on how to think or a soul how to feel."

Patrick Meade reposted

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a convoluted, 36-page emergency order about NIH grant terminations. Two main takeaways: -$2 billion (not the government # of $780 million) in NIH grants will likely be re-terminated -future legal challenges will be much harder w/ @maxkozlov.bsky.social:

nature.comUS Supreme Court allows NIH to cut $2 billion in research grantsThe decision will hinder lawsuits against grant terminations, legal specialists say.

Sridhara Dasu giving a great talk on accelerator/detector synergies at the 2nd US muon collider workshop, I also learned that SLD was not just the SLAC large detector but also referred to as slow lingering death 😅 🧪⚛️

Patrick Meade reposted

Breaking: NSF is suspending roughly 300 grants with UCLA, following a DOJ finding on Tuesday that the university violated Title VI by "creating a hostile educational environment for Jewish and Israeli students."