The near-perfect weather in California inspires many SLAC employees to enjoy jogging and walking at lunch time. The long, straight stretch beside the world's longest building, the klystron gallery of the two-mile Stanford Linear Accelerator, seems to compel exercise.
By day, Stephon Alexander theorizes about the effects of dark matter in his office at SLAC. By night he plays tenor saxophone in a San Francisco jazz club.
The growing relationship of astrophysics and particle physics is a hot topic these days. In addition to the appearance of new faces and institutions at the labs, the growth of this area of research can actually be seen in the references of particle physics papers.
In 1978 Alan Guth heard about the “flatness problem” of the universe while attending a talk on cosmology—a field he was only marginally curious about. A year later, Guth found a solution.
How many CDs are in the box? "100," a child guessed. "1000," said another. The answer was 2000, the equivalent of just 0.1 percent of the database capabilities at SLAC. "Imagine 2 million CDs in your bedroom."
Maori lore says that the rising and falling of the water level in Lake Wakatipu every 51 minutes is due to the breathing of the giant sleeping beneath.
Quick, what's 987654321 divided by 123456789? The answer is close to 8, but not exactly 8. Why does the result differ by about a tenth of a million, yielding 8.0000000729...?