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03/01/06

First Z at SLC

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?

03/01/06

On the shoulders of how many giants?

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.”

03/01/06

Slippery substance

Water continues to reveal mysteries and surprises as researchers investigate its structure.

03/01/06

ILC design

Supersymmetry. Dark matter. Extra dimensions. Scientists have proposed the International Linear Collider (ILC), a next-generation project designed to smash together electrons and their antiparticles at a higher-than-ever energy, to learn more about these and other mysteries of the universe.

03/01/06

A special introduction

“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.

03/01/06

Where do they go?

High-energy physics labs worldwide are neighbors with numerous butterfly species–from the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus, photo) found near CERN to the Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) that shares the Bay Area with SLAC. But where do butterflies go in the winter?

03/01/06

Burl Skaggs: In the clouds

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.