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.
In May, Fermilab accelerator experts began to speculate about when the Tevatron collider would hit the inverse femtobarn mark, a measure of the gazillions of collisions produced since March 2001.
As the Global Design Effort for the proposed International Linear Collider starts to take shape, an international collaboration of scientists simultaneously works on an alternative linear collider technology that pushes physics and engineering to the edge.
Research papers are traditionally written about data gathered in an experiment. However, research papers are also published before an experiment has even begun, and the International Linear Collider is an example.
The International Linear Collider is a proposed new electron-positron collider. Together with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, it would allow physicists to explore energy regions beyond the reach of today's accelerators.
The 1940s saw the origins of linear electron accelerators that directly led to the 2-mile-long accelerator at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. SLAC archivist Jean Deken presents a pictorial history of early linear accelerator development at Stanford University.