During a recent trip to CERN on the Franco-Swiss border, my fellow International Linear Collider communicators and I gathered in the cafeteria for tea and coffee.
The Stanford Linear Accelerator pumps large amounts of energy into beams of electrons and positrons, sending them into the PEP-II storage ring where the particles can collide, revealing the secrets of fundamental particle processes.
In biology, there is a loose rule of thumb that says the bigger an organism, the longer its life will be. If Fermilab's "Jolly Green Giant" is any indication, the rule may also apply to equipment in high-energy physics.
Roger Erickson was annoyed with all the calls to the main control room. People were eager for news of the Stanford Linear Collider (SLC). Was it running? Did they already observe the first Z particle, one of the carriers of the weak force?
“It’s not often you get introduced by a Nobel Prize winner,” said US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former professor of chemical engineering at MIT and CEO of a Fortune 300 company.