Dear Physics Community,

Our budget request went to the Dean’s office last week.  In response to our solicitation, we received about 30 thoughtful suggestions from all over the Department.  We consolidated many of them into items in our request, and we will meet with the School of Science this week to discuss our request.  We may be asked to make revisions and then resubmit our budget that will go to the Provost.  We will hear Provost’s decisions in February or March for the budget year that starts July 1, 2022.

I will produce a list of all the suggestions we received and let the community know which ones went forward in the next two weeks (I have a trip coming up next week).  Having the list will be helpful as other funding opportunities arise.  Thank you to our students, postdocs, staff, and faculty for their participation.

In the meantime, much is going on, the days are getting shorter, and the holidays approach…

Peter

Physics

• MIT News: Simulating Galaxies from Mark Vogelsberger here
• MicroBOONE results from Janet Conrad and Or Hen summary paper here, four other supporting papers referenced in the summary
• Mysterious waves from the center of the galaxy
• New measurement of the neutron lifetime