For the first time, scientists have measured the rate at which high-energy neutrinos are absorbed by our planet, a development that could lead to discoveries about physics and the Earth.
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.
The sighting of Jupiter's moons by Galileo Galilei resonates through science and history. Using a handmade telescope in January 1610, Galileo confirmed the Copernican theory that the planets moved around the sun; the Earth was not the center of the solar system.
The neutrino experiment K2K (KEK to Kamioka) collaboration shares a logbook with Super-Kamiokande scientists at its far detector site 250 kilometers from KEK in Tsukuba.
Forty years ago, Korea was a poor country with low per capita income, considered a developing nation by the rest of the world. Things have changed–enormously. Today, Korea is an industrial powerhouse; its 50 million citizens are recognized for the production of cars and electronic goods.
A portion of US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman's remarks during his visit to Fermilab on April 7, 2006: "Successful futures are built on past successes, and in this respect, you have every reason to be optimistic and confident about your future."
You can't start a high-energy physics program in a remote third-world country overnight. But you might be able to do it in fifteen years. That is what Vietnamese and American physicists hope to do by helping Vietnamese students to become part of the worldwide particle physics community.