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Bear Canyon Trail re-opens; other Flagstaff Fire closures remain
Jul 7th
City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks officials today announced the re-opening of the Bear Canyon Trail following last week’s fire closure. Bear Canyon Trail above west of the Mesa Trail will be open, effective immediately, up to where hikers can connect to Green Mountain via the Green-Bear Trail. Travel is limited to on-trail only. Fern Canyon, Bear Peak West Ridge and Shadow Canyon trails remain closed.
Because much of the area that burned is on very steep slopes, contained very large trees, and was largely inaccessible to fire crews, some areas of active fire may continue to smolder for some time. Dangerous conditions continue to exist, especially along the eastern edge of the fire and in Fern and Shadow canyons.
“We had a spot fire in upper Shadow Canyon,” Stone said, “and smoldering trees can topple over and ignite at any time. Burning logs and debris can roll downhill on such steep slopes and start new fires. So we still have to be somewhat cautious about opening all of the area around the fire even though these areas may not actually have burned.”
Open Space and Fire Department staff will continue to assess the fire potential and risks to the public over the next few weeks. The city will strive to strike a reasonable balance between risk and access to these popular natural areas.
A map of the continued closures is attached to this release.
For information, visit www.osmp.org or call 303-441-3440.
EnergySmart announces Home Energy Makeover contest
Jul 5th
County residents eligible for $60,000 in energy upgrade prizes this summer
Boulder County, Colo. – All residents in Boulder County who sign up for a home energy assessment from EnergySmart before Friday, Aug. 31 will be eligible to win a Home Energy Makeover.
One Grand Prize winner will receive a whole-house makeover, valued at up to $20,000. The Grand Prize package includes a new energy efficient furnace, air sealing and insulation upgrades to the attic and crawlspace/basement, an energy efficient water heater, cooling system upgrades, and $4,000 to use for recommended energy upgrades of the homeowner’s choosing.
Four second place winners will each win prize packages worth up to $10,000. Second Place Prize packages include a new energy efficient furnace, home air sealing and insulation upgrades, and $1,500 to use toward a recommended energy upgrade of the homeowner’s choosing. One winner will be selected from each of four geographical “regions” of the county: City of Boulder, City of Longmont, East County (including Erie, Lafayette, Louisville and Superior), and mountain towns/unincorporated county (including Lyons, Nederland, Jamestown, Ward, Allenspark, Niwot, Gunbarrel, etc.).
The contest prizes are largely donated by local contractors, including Solar City, Service Experts, EcoHandyman, ThermalCraft Insulation, EcoSmart Homes, ERC Insulation, and SAC Mechanical. The remaining prizes are provided through federal grant funding.
The Home Energy Makeover contest is open to residents in all Boulder County communities. Winning homes must be owner-occupied and must need energy improvements. Residents are encouraged to register even if they live in newer homes or don’t think they need energy upgrades.
Boulder resident Megan Cuzzolino benefited from EnergySmart, even in a relatively new home. “I was surprised that my 2006 condo didn’t have much insulation,” Cuzzolino said. “After air sealing and insulating, my condo has been cozier all year round.”
EnergySmart focuses on improvements that will reduce energy waste, improve comfort, and produce cost-savings for both residential and business participants. Services include energy assessments and expert advisor assistance with finding contractors and all available rebates and financing options for energy efficiency upgrades. Since the program’s launch in January 2011, EnergySmart has helped more than 5,500 residents and 1,800 businesses throughout Boulder County.
EnergySmart is funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the U.S. Department of Energy’s BetterBuildings grant program and is sponsored in partnership by Boulder County, the cities of Boulder and Longmont, Xcel Energy and Platte River Power Authority. For more information, visit www.EnergySmartYES.com or call 303-544-1000 (for homes) or 303-441-1300 (for businesses).
-B
CU team helps find the “God” particle
Jul 5th
Multinational team searching for answers about dark matter, dark energy, gravity and the fundamental laws of physics.
An international team including University of Colorado Boulder researchers has found the first direct evidence for a new particle that likely is the long sought-after Higgs boson, believed to endow the universe with mass.
Comprised of thousands of scientists, students and support staff working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, the team has been conducting experiments at a facility known as the Large Hadron Collider, a $10 billion, 17-mile underground loop below the Swiss-French border in Geneva that is the world’s most powerful atom smasher. Scientists have been using the LHC to attempt to recreate conditions immediately following the Big Bang by smashing protons together, searching for answers about dark matter, dark energy, gravity and the fundamental laws of physics.
Higgs boson particle thought to give other particles their mass
A huge target of the LHC effort has involved looking for evidence of the elusive Higgs boson, a theoretical elementary particle that has been predicted by physicists. Thought to give other elementary particles their mass, the Higgs boson is the only particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics — a scientific theory of how the universe works at the simplest level — that has not been directly detected.
The CERN team is reporting evidence today of an anomalous “bump” in a particular search region of the energy spectrum targeted by the scientists that has a mass of about 125 billion electronic volts, or 125 GeV, said CU-Boulder physics Professor John Cumalat. The research team designed their searches around the theoretical expectations for the decay of the Standard Model Higgs boson particle, he said.
“What we have found is incontrovertible evidence for a new particle at around 125 GeV,” Cumalat said. “To prove it is the Standard Model Higgs particle we will need to carefully measure the new particle’s properties, but with more data these properties can be determined.”

Inside the Large Hadron Collider
The CU-Boulder high-energy physics team, which includes 15 faculty and students, is involved with the Compact Muon Solenoid, or CMS, one of two massive particle detectors in the LHC and which weighs more than 12,500 tons. The CU team helped design and build the CMS forward pixel detectors — the “eyes” of the device — that help researchers measure the direction and momentum of subatomic particles following collisions, providing clues to their origin and structure.
CU-Boulder Professor William Ford said there were strong hints of the existence of the Higgs boson particle during the CMS particle collisions in 2011. “Now, with the new data looking so similar, it’s hard not to be a believer,” he said. The CERN team hopes to accumulate about four times as much data as they have now on the Higgs boson search project by the end of the year, according to Ford.
“God particle” would being mass and order to the universe
While the Higgs boson was nicknamed “The God Particle” by physicist and Nobel laureate Leon Lederman because its existence would bring mass and order to the universe — a nickname that has been seized on by the media — it is a term physicists do not particularly care for because of its connotations, said Cumalat.
The existence of the Higgs boson theory is crucial to helping to explain the underpinnings of the universe by confirming the Standard Model of physics that explains why fundamental particles — the building blocks of the universe — have mass. Mass is a trait that combines with gravity to give an object weight. Without Higgs boson, there could be no galaxies, stars, planets or people, say researchers.
“It is a very exciting time to be in particle physics and to be involved in an experiment unlocking the meaning of mass,” said CU-Boulder doctoral student Brian Drell.
In addition to Cumalat, Ford and Drell, there are 12 other CU-Boulder people involved in the project: faculty members Uriel Nauenberg, Jim Smith, and Steve Wagner; postdoctoral researchers Alessandro Gaz, Eduardo Luiggi, Keith Ulmer, and Shilei Zang; graduate students Bernadette Heyburn, Andrew Johnson and Troy Mulholland; and technical staff members Eric Erdos and Douglas Johnson.
Sixteen years in the making, the $3.8 billion LHC project involves an estimated 10,000 people and staff from 60 countries, including more than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94 American universities and laboratories supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation. The United States is providing about $530 million, primarily for the LHC detectors.