Fermilab might not have the world's longest fingernails or the world's oldest man, but, according to Guinness World Records 2007, the lab does have the most powerful beam of neutrinos.
Jodi Cooley works half a mile underground, in a mine that stopped operating 40 years ago. A rattling elevator takes her to work, 27 floors beneath the surface. The ride down the mineshaft is five minutes of complete darkness. A colony of bats inhabits the mine.
Like many particle physicists, JoAnne Hewett can trace the course of her career through her scientific publications. But for a more colorful retrospective of her work, the SLAC theorist simply decorates her Christmas tree.
If this magnet could talk, you'd hear some amazing stories. During its half-century career, this four-million-pound magnet contributed to experiments that changed our view of physics while serving some of the field's foremost experimenters, including Enrico Fermi.
Security officers raise and lower 20 flags in front of Fermilab's Wilson Hall every day. Each flag represents a country that researchers come from to work at the lab. "The problem is that there are twenty flag poles," says Fermilab's Roy Rubinstein.
For artist Lylie Fisher, particle physics is much more than a field of science. It is art: "Like art, particle physics deals with the invisible," says Fisher. "One portrays emotional and spiritual experiences; the other studies unseen matter and energy.
Call it subtle irony: The ground breaking for SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) took place among earth movers that had already been busily transforming the rolling California landscape for weeks.
The Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) isn't scheduled to open until 2008, but the Tokai campus facility is already the site of discovery—just not of the physics variety.
