When researchers reanalyzed the gold-standard data set of the early universe, they concluded that the cosmos must be “closed,” or curled up like a ball. Most others remain unconvinced.
Mark Hanhardt spent his childhood exploring caverns and watching his dad, who was a miner, come home from work covered in dust. Still, he had no interest in working underground.
For most scientists, membership in a Large Hadron Collider experiment is a ticket to research at a frontier of particle physics. For Hafeez Hoorani, it also marked his country’s first step toward building a tradition of experimental particle physics research.
Who would you drive 10½ hours to see? The Grateful Dead? The Dalai Lama? What about an old, friendly guy who reads a lot and is really good at physics?
In the summer of 1952, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Cosmotron particle accelerator were preparing for a visit from scientists planning their own, more powerful, accelerator at a new European lab called CERN.