Last October, the front of the SLAC computing center looked like an elaborate children's war game in progress. Ad hoc piles of polystyrene, plastic, wooden pallets, and cardboard created an image of bunkers and trenches in a plastic post-industrial landscape.
Citation numbers and the Impact Factor of journals are often used to evaluate the quality and the importance of research. Both quantities have some shortcomings, and people using these indicators should know when and when not to use them.
Hosting the "Late Show with Leon," Nobel laureate Leon Lederman shared with high school students his top fourteen ways to know you have won the Nobel Prize:
Particle physics detectors in space will record gamma rays in search of dark matter, the evolution of stars, and natures most powerful particle accelerators.
The distinctive and amusing term "barn" originated with two Purdue University physicists working on the Manhattan Project in 1942—and it was classified information by the US government until after World War II.
If the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) completes the evolution from physicists' dream to discovery machine, Jonathan Dorfan will know when and where the transforming moment occurred: August 20, 2004, in Beijing, China.
It looks like a simple silver trailer, but it's more like a shoe store on wheels. Mike Sitarz pulls his metal trailer, better known among Fermilab employees as the "shoemobile," behind the Technical Division industrial buildings at 8 a.m. every Tuesday.
For 33 particle physicists, the year 2005 was a great experiment in science communication. To support the World Year of Physics, these brave souls had agreed to share their thoughts and their lives with the public, blogging on the Quantum Diaries Web site.