Search for “BaBar” on YouTube.com, and you'll get a long list of links to a 1980s TV series based on an animated elephant. But a surprise is hidden among the cartoons—a six-minute film shot in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center's BaBar control room.
Atomic element 94 was named “plutonium” after Pluto, the ninth planet from the Sun (now demoted to “minor planet” status.) By tradition, plutonium should have been assigned the symbol “Pl,” but co-discoverer Glenn Seaborg gave it the symbol “Pu” as
His photographs show scientists and experiments, large physics facilities and tiny devices, enthusiastic crowds of conference participants and lone researchers absorbed in thought.
Drawn by the chance to help answer the most fundamental questions about the universe, philanthropists are starting to make significant investments in physics research.
Supercomputers can play chess, map DNA, and aid in the study of dark energy. But recently they were unleashed on a bold new frontier: optimizing the production of potato chips.
