Layoffs, budget cuts, a call for new vision in high-energy physics -- in her first months as director of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Persis Drell had a lot to navigate.
Many high-energy physics laboratories have athletic clubs, music clubs, or chess clubs, but a bread-tasting club? Only in Japan. And only at Koo Energy Ken, KEK, outside of Tsukuba.
When particle accelerators gave birth to the powerful X-ray microscopes known as synchrotrons, they revolutionized the study of virtually every field of science.
For most people, a Caribbean cruise is an opportunity for sun-splashed daydreaming, guiltless beach reading, and lackadaisical dips in warm, shimmering waters—in other words, complete mental repose.
In a boon for archaeology, particle physicists plan to probe ancient structures for tombs and other hidden chambers. The key to the technology is the muon, a cousin of the electron that rains harmlessly from the sky.
On the hit television show Numb3rs, where crimes are solved with math and science, cosmologist and theoretical physicist Larry Fleinhardt has lived in a monastery and flown into space searching for a sense of purpose. The next step takes him to Fermilab.
Amateur scientists make important contributions in a number of fields, from astronomy to ornithology. But very few have the background needed to succeed in high-energy physics.