Climate, new physics and Jupiter on the horizon for 2016

摘要

It's fitting that the first issue of the new year features stories about what will, I predict, hold on as scientific newsmakers during 2016. On Page 6, for instance, Thomas Sumner reports on the historic agreement that aims to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. Exactly how to cut carbon emissions enough to achieve this, and news about climate change's impacts, will surely get major ink this year. Another story with legs: Results from this year's record-setting proton smashups at the beefed-up Large Hadron Collider has physicists chattering. Operating at substantially higher energies than that of its earlier runs, the LHC has already produced a hint of a possible new character in the drama of particle physics, Andrew Grant writes on Page 7. "All eyes are on a little bump in the data that was presented in December," Grant says. "New collisions in 2016 should either enhance the possibility of a new particle or reveal it as a statistical fluke."