Stanford and University of California researchers found evidence of particles that are their own antiparticles. These 'Majorana fermions’ could one day help make quantum computers more robust.
In November, the Pierre Auger Observatory outside Malargüe, Argentina, celebrates its scientific launch. The observatory will record high-energy cosmic-ray showers with ground-based water tank detectors and air-shower cameras.
In today's particle physics experiments, it takes a fraction of a second for data recorded by detectors to be transferred to a data storage facility. Soon thereafter, collaboration members from around the world have access to the data via the Internet.
Particle physics has been getting its due in the theater world with the recent plays Copenhagen and QED, which celebrate the lives and work of famous physicists. Now the field is being paid the highest musical and artistic compliment.
Computing centers are hot--literally. At least, they are in the absence of extensive cooling systems. With an increasing number of computers installed at scientific labs nationwide, the efficiency of those cooling systems is becoming much more important.
Artist Robert Lang has folded intricate paper sculptures from flat sheets that, in some cases, started out over nine feet long. He uses the same method many of us used to make cranes and party hats in elementary schoola series of precise folds. But Langs designs are far more complex.
This memo by John Yoh, written on November 17, 1976, certainly caught the attention of the Columbia-Fermilab-Stony Brook collaboration (Fermilab experiment E288).
Believe it or not, most of Fermilab's power comes from pi. Electrical power, that is, as the shape of the lab's power poles is modeled after pi, the symbol for the famous number.