End-of-the-week wrap covering the historical first ever detection of CNO neutrinos by Borexino, the ingredients required for a modified gravity theory to replace dark matter, and how to search for new light particles using the black hole mass gap.
Top arXiv papers from Week 26, 2020
End of the week wrap-up, which discusses how early dark energy runs into trouble when confronted against large-scale structure full-shape galaxy power spectrum data (with a social injustice metaphor related to bad practices when trying to solve the H0 tension), the puzzling origin of GW190814, and a good ambulance chasing paper which turns XENON1T into a machine to set precise constraints on non-standard neutrino interactions.
Top arXiv papers from Week 25, 2020
This week is a bit special, and I have been debating with myself for some time whether I should have talked about the XENON electronic recoil excess we all have heard about, reported in 2006.09721 (this inner debate is one of the reasons behind my delay). Ordinarily I would have done so, but this time I opted for no, simply because there is much better coverage on the XENON result out there than anything I could possibly produce (needless to say many other popular science articles on the XENON results are instead pure junk). Natalie Wolchover is probably one of my favorite scientific journalists (by far the best among the ones I have interacted with), so for those interested in an excellent coverage of the XENON result, I recommend her piece on Quanta Magazine. Having said that, I’ve devoted this week’s entry to a new measurement of H0 from the Baryonic Tully-Fisher relation, a new neutrino mass forecast for cosmology taking into account a very subtle effect on the galaxy bias, and a study of the shadows of rotating regular black holes.
Top arXiv papers from Week 24, 2020
This week’s entry discusses a new measurement of the Hubble constant from Type II Supernovae, a map from Poincaré gauge theories to bi-scalar-tensor theories useful for cosmological applications, and a map between fluid and field approaches to interacting dark energy valid at the background and first-order perturbation level.
Ricordi della peggiore squadra di sempre della Serie A
Siccome questo non è un romanzo giallo ma un blog post, vi anticipo direttamente di che squadra stiamo parlando: l’Ancona 2003-2004. Questi sono alcuni ricordi (alcuni personali), a distanza di 16 anni, di quella che fu una squadra a dir poco disastrosa.
Top arXiv papers from Week 23, 2020
This week’s entry discusses the effects of the Hubble constant on the growth of high-redshift supermassive black holes, a new test of General Relativity from galaxy-galaxy lensing and clustering amplitudes, and a new WIMP dark matter production mechanism from conformal or disformal couplings to ultra-light scalars.
Top arXiv papers from Week 22, 2020
Top arXiv papers from Week 21, 2020
This week’s entry features the return of the Hubble tension, the first discussion in this blog on the lensing anomaly (Alens tension), and for the second time a discussion on cross-correlations between ultra-high energy cosmic rays and large-scale structure (this time done on real data). As a totally random observation, all three papers discussed this week feature authors which already appeared earlier in this blog. Misha Ivanov already featured on Week 7 (#2), Julien Lesgourgues already featured on Week 11 (again #1!), Marc Kamionkowski already featured on Week 16 (#3), Avi Loeb already featured on Week 15 (#3), and Pavel Motloch already featured with another single-author paper on Week 17 (#3). And no, this is a totally random observation and I’m not trying to imply anything about these authors or the quality of their work (you might want to read my welcome post disclaimers once again), but rather you might start to see some interesting patterns regarding the type of works I am interested in. Enjoy!
Top arXiv papers from Week 20, 2020
This week’s installment covers a new Bayesian analysis code (particularly designed for cosmological studies!) called Cobaya, a gravitational wave constraint on the number π (yes, you’ve read correctly) as a null test of General Relativity, and a new proposal for holographic dark energy based on John Barrow’s recent COVID-19-inspired proposal for fractal structure on a black hole event horizon. Enjoy!
Top arXiv papers from Week 19, 2020
This week’s entry features a futuristic way for obtaining a direct geometrical measurement of the Hubble constant using the so-called cosmic secular parallax, a study on the possibility of cross-correlating ultra-high energy cosmic rays and large-scale structure and what we would learn from this cross-correlation, and the second-best constraint on the tidal charge of brane-world black holes from the shadow of M87* detected by the Event Horizon Telescope. Enjoy!