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.
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?
Standing outside in the dark and the cold on the east coast of Scotland, 500 people let out a communal gasp as a huge screen was illuminated on the side of the Torness nuclear power station.
Scientists since the time of Sir Isaac Newton (and before) have built their work on the work of those who preceded them. Newton famously described this by saying, “If I have been able to see farther, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Burl Skaggs lives in a two-story house in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Each workday he has breakfast, kisses his wife Carol goodbye, and goes down to his extra-large garage.