How do we hunt for elusive neutrinos emitted by distant astrophysical sources? Submerge a huge observatory under ice or water … and then wait patiently.
This August, one hundred and fifty postdocs and advanced graduate students from around the world will gather on the Illinois prairie to enhance their understanding of particle colliders at the CERN-Fermilab Hadron Collider Physics Summer School.
The Positron Electron Project (PEP) collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center produced its first collisions in 1979. All sorts of particles burst out, including the tau lepton, an ephemeral cousin of the electron.
Along the Loop Road at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the roar of falling water and a refreshing mist filled the air after six solid weeks of California rain. But the water cascading down the inside of Campus Cooling Tower 101, and landing in a frothy pool, is hardly scenic.
Clouds of electrons could block the view of new discoveries at the proposed ILC, a multi-billion-dollar particle collider. Eliminating those clouds is critical to the prspects for the machine's success.
Over a half-eaten burrito or a bowl of spaghetti, Sam Ehrenstein ponders the unanswered questions of fundamental physics. Yet Sam is no experimental physicist or postdoc brooding over his data. Not yet, anyway.
Physics has demonstrated that the everyday phenomena we experience are governed by universal principles applying at time and distance scales far beyond normal human experience.
