When an earthquake flattened buildings in a number of towns across central Italy, physicists turned their focus from research to rescue and rebuilding.
Helium is the lifeblood of large particle accelerators. As the worlds supply dwindles, the particle physics community must take steps to preserve this precious commodity or learn to live without it.
Look at the periodic table of elements, and youd be hard pressed to find an element that is not used in physics. But what are the most important elements for building accelerators, detecting particles, and solving the mysteries of the universe?
The spotlight caught Todd Satogata. The camera zoomed in. “Did your particle beam shoot down a UFO?” the TV host asked. The accelerator physicist at RHIC, Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, smiled. Of course not.
You can't feel it. Yet the moon's gravitational pull shifts the ground ever so slightly, creating “earth tides” that rhythmically raise and lower the ground.
