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Explain it in 60 Seconds: Lattice QCD

07/25/24

Lattice gauge theory, or lattice QCD, is a calculation method that helps scientists make predictions about the behavior of quarks at low energies.

03/01/06

On the shoulders of how many giants?

Scientists since the time of Sir Isaac Newton (and before) have built their work on the work of those who preceded them. Newton famously described this by saying, “If I have been able to see farther, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”

03/01/06

A special introduction

“It’s not often you get introduced by a Nobel Prize winner,” said US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former professor of chemical engineering at MIT and CEO of a Fortune 300 company.

03/01/06

Quarks

Quarks are fundamental particles found in the matter all around us.

03/01/06

Where do they go?

High-energy physics labs worldwide are neighbors with numerous butterfly species–from the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus, photo) found near CERN to the Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) that shares the Bay Area with SLAC. But where do butterflies go in the winter?

02/01/06

Supernova 1987A

Upon arriving for work at the laboratory of Masatoshi Koshiba at the University of Tokyo, Yoji Totsuka handed me a fax telling of a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, picked up by optical telescopes.

02/01/06

Hitting the broad side of a (classified) barn

The distinctive and amusing term "barn" originated with two Purdue University physicists working on the Manhattan Project in 1942—and it was classified information by the US government until after World War II.