Christopher Berry

cplberry.bsky.social

10 December 2025 17:41

A couple of really nice stories about the intriguing subsolar mass candidate #S251112cm www.science.org/content/arti... by Adrian Cho www.iflscience.com/candidate-gr... by @drcarpineti.bsky.social A groundbreaking discovery, or just a false alarm? Time (and more analysis) may tell 🔭🧪☄️⚛️

Christopher Berry

cplberry.bsky.social

10 December 2025 17:41

Latest false alarm rate for #S251112cm with an updated background model of about 1 in 4 yr, so slightly less significant GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/42... Rating 📏☕ [🧪🔭⚛️]

Christopher Berry

cplberry.bsky.social

10 December 2025 17:41

Oo! Interesting #GravitationalWave candidate #S251112cm potentially from a *subsolar* mass source If real, the source is probably has chirp mass ~0.1–0.87 solar masses False alarm rate 1 in 6.2 yr GraceDB gracedb.ligo.org/superevents/... GCN gcn.nasa.gov/circulars/42... Rating 📏🍬 [🧪🔭⚛️]

Tom Radcliffe

tjradcliffe.bsky.social

25 May 2025 09:26

This kind of experiment has been going on for ages: I worked on pulse-shape discrimination to reduce background for it in annular Ge(Li) detectors as an MSc student, more decades ago than I care to remember. Very cool to see modern ultra-pure materials push the limits so much harder!

Tom Radcliffe

tjradcliffe.bsky.social

25 May 2025 09:26

Larger mass, better shielding, and isotopic enrichment of 76Ge, from the sounds of it. Makes me feel like we were chipping flakes off stone axes, back in the day. HPGe detectors were *just* starting to become available reliably with some real volume back then. Now what can be done is amazing!