Friday wrap-up: B to D*τν, ULO...

Wherein I list some (mostly) recent happenings, ramble a bit, and provide links, in an order roughly determined by importance and relevance to particle physics. Views are my own. Content very definitely skewed by my own leanings and by papers getting coverage, and it may not even be correct. It is a blog after all...

Very busy at Planck 2015 this week, so will keep this short and sweet -- just the headlines.

• For coverage from Planck see A Perfectly Formed Puddle.

• This week LHCb and Belle have weighed in on $R(D^*) = Br(B\to D^*\tau\nu)/Br(B\to D^*\mu\nu)$ at the Flavor Physics and CP violation conference in Nagoya. Intriguingly, both measurements have observed a higher $R$ than the SM predicts -- the same effect seen in the previous B-factory analyses. Taken alone they are not much, but together probably quite significant. Add this to the growing pile of flavour anomalies...
  
  
  

  

• There is talk of a ULO (unidentified lying object) in the beampipe at the LHC, already causing some beam failures. In the mean time the beam has been directed around it. We will see if this has any effect on the schedule. At the moment we are expecting more 13 TeV collisions in June, and physics in earnest from July.

• Some hype on a new solution to the hierarchy problem.