The most energetic particles in the universe have a message for us. The gigantic Pierre Auger Southern Observatory, still under construction in Argentina, is already trying to decipher it.
At almost any particle physics conference, meeting, or lunch table, the phrase "physics beyond the Standard Model" is heard over and over again. What's wrong with the Standard Model, anyway? Why are physicists so sure that there is something beyond it?
Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a crew of four to five operators plus a crew chief are on shift in Fermilab's Main Control Room, monitoring the accelerator complex.
Quantum Diaries follows the lives of scientists from around the world as they live the World Year of Physics 2005. In their own words, in photos, blogs and videos, they tell the real-life stories of real physicists in real time.
So who's this Einstein guy I keep hearing about? He writes these five papers a hundred years ago, and now the whole world wants a year to glorify him? Booshwah, I say.
In 1978 Alan Guth heard about the “flatness problem” of the universe while attending a talk on cosmology—a field he was only marginally curious about. A year later, Guth found a solution.
