The 2018 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland for their pioneering work to turn lasers into powerful tools.
Amateur scientists make important contributions in a number of fields, from astronomy to ornithology. But very few have the background needed to succeed in high-energy physics.
For most people, a Caribbean cruise is an opportunity for sun-splashed daydreaming, guiltless beach reading, and lackadaisical dips in warm, shimmering waters—in other words, complete mental repose.
In August 1982, Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, paid a private visit to the European laboratory CERN. On her arrival she told Director General Herwig Schopper that she wanted to be treated as a fellow scientist.
When Sal Rappoccio, a postdoctoral researcher from Johns Hopkins University, joined the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment in mid-2007, he did what any newcomer would do. He tried to start his analysis. It did not go well.
Ryan Schultz and Kris Anderson had a problem: how to inspect a window in a pipe that carries a powerful particle beam, 40 feet below ground and 100 feet down a narrow tunnel.
Seeing is easy. We open our eyes, and there the world is–in starlight or sunlight, still or in motion, as far as the Pleiades or as close as the tips of our noses.
One of my favorite scenes in The Big Bang Theory involves the two main characters, Leonard and Sheldon, trying to move a large, flat box up two flights of stairs. Faced with no equipment and little upper-body strength, Leonard declares, “We are physicists!