In May 1983, physicists on the UA1 detector for the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator at CERN made the first definitive observations of the Z boson.
A Faraday Cup is (pick one) 1) a gadget named after the great experimentalist Michael Faraday, used to measure the current of a charged-particle beam, or 2) an award that recognizes the inventors of innovative instruments for particle accelerators.
Some days Jerry Zimmerman calmly follows his typical morning routine and joins countless other suburbanites on the road to work. Then there are the other days. Those days Zimmerman takes on an alter-persona.
When you hear the descending flurry of 16th notes in the trumpets, you know the gamma rays are coming. They speed toward the detector in the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope in chromatically harmonized notes.
As Reid Mumford pedals, sometimes he thinks about how to break away from the pack. Other times he thinks about how the smallest bits of the universe break apart in high-energy collisions.
