I was having a routine dental cleaning the other day, and of course it’s an occupational hazard that people want you to explain what you do in words of one syllable or fewer.
For most scientists, membership in a Large Hadron Collider experiment is a ticket to research at a frontier of particle physics. For Hafeez Hoorani, it also marked his country’s first step toward building a tradition of experimental particle physics research.
Who would you drive 10½ hours to see? The Grateful Dead? The Dalai Lama? What about an old, friendly guy who reads a lot and is really good at physics?
In the summer of 1952, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory's Cosmotron particle accelerator were preparing for a visit from scientists planning their own, more powerful, accelerator at a new European lab called CERN.
More than two billion tons of cargo pass through ports and waterways annually in the United States. Many ports rely on gamma-ray scanners, based on radioactive isotopes such as cobalt-60, to screen cargo for nuclear materials or weapons.
