As a mechanical designer, Catherine Carr's first big undertaking at SLAC was a vacuum transporter system that let operators install electron cathodes, under vacuum, into the injector gun of the Stanford Linear Collider.
When exploring the mysteries of the universe, don't neglect the floorboards. Last December at Fermilab, repairs to the ceiling over the kitchen in the Aspen East users' center, targeting a joist that had distorted the floor of the dorm room above, produced some startling debris.
Although initial results were encouraging, physicists searching for an exotic five-quark particle now think it probably doesn't exist. The debate over the pentaquark search shows how science moves forward.
When physicists at Fermilab smash particles together, most of what comes out of the collisions is well understood. But every once in awhile strange things appear in the data—incidents popularly known as zoo events.