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Roy Schwitters, a world-renowned experimental high-energy physicist and emeritus professor at The University of Texas at Austin, passed away earlier this month.

Here in part 2 of our continuing remembrance of Steven Weinberg, we're diving a little deeper into what we know because of him. Weinberg was one of the world's greatest theoretical physicists, and his passing last year was deeply felt not only by us here at The University of Texas at Austin, but by a broad community of scientists and science-loving people. Weinberg summed up the goal of his life's work as: "to know why things are the way they are." To him, that meant distilling the rules of physics down to their simplest, most beautiful essence.

When physicists want to explain how subatomic particles—such as electrons, photons, quarks and neutrinos—behave and interact, they use a framework called quantum field theory (QFT). QFT might be the most successful physical theory ever invented. It was used to predict the existence of the Higgs boson, antimatter and neutrinos. And it has predicted the results of particle physics experiments accurately to the highest number of decimal places ever recorded.

The American Physical Society has selected Christina Markert, a professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin, as a 2021 APS Fellow. Fellowships are awarded based on outstanding contributions to the field of physics, and are received by no more than one half of one percent of the society's members each year.

An elite prize among scientists worldwide is being given to Steven Weinberg, a professor of physics at The University of Texas at Austin, for his "continuous leadership in fundamental physics, with broad impact across particle physics, gravity and cosmology, and for communicating science to a wider audience."

The ATLAS Collaboration, an international team of physicists including Peter Onyisi from the University of Texas at Austin, has announced the observation of Higgs bosons produced together with a top-quark pair. Observing this extremely rare process is a significant milestone for the field of high-energy physics.

With the turning of a shovelful of earth a mile underground, a new era in international particle physics research officially begins.

Physicists have been puzzled ever since an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the late 1990s found that muons, elementary particles produced when cosmic rays hit our atmosphere, have slightly different magnetic properties than predicted. If true, it could mean a shakeup is in store for the theoretical framework that physicists use to describe the universe.

Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate and a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, recently discussed some of his concerns about the use and interpretation of quantum mechanics at a gathering of science communicators hosted by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW).