In August 2005 nearly seven hundred physicists and engineers from around the world traveled to the small Rocky Mountain town of Snowmass, Colorado, to advance the planning and design of the proposed International Linear Collider.
Burton Richter’s group double-checked what they thought was a minor statistical inconsistency in their data. Using the Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR), they probed electron-positron collision energies around 3.1 GeV.
More than 500 tons of niobium would go into building the ILC. What's so great about niobium? Where does it come from? And is the Earth's supply going to run out?
The SLAC archives, in the windowless basement of the Central Laboratory Annex, are no greenhouse. Yet for the past few years, a small tree has adorned the den of SLAC's archivist Jean Deken.
Travel is an integral part of the life and work of particle physicists. Since the beginning of the year, some 30 physicists known as the Quantum Diarists have criss-crossed the world to meet collaborators at distant accelerators, attend conferences, teach a seminar, or interview for jobs.
