Numbers: Pierre Auger Observatory

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.

Don't cite anybody over 30?

A common assertion is that the best work in physics is done by people who are under 30. Is it true?

A bright machine

The Fermilab Tevatron achieved a world-record peak luminosity, or brightness, in colliding protons and antiprotons on October 4, 2005.

Sciences on the Grid

All fields of science benefit from more resources and better collaboration, so it's no surprise that scientific researchers are among the first to explore the potential of grid computing to connect people, tools, and technology.

GEANT4 the physics simulation toolkit

You go to a home supplies store and purchase the oak board for those shelves you need to add to your basement.

Computing the quarks

A piece of steel may look cold and lifeless. But like any other piece of matter, it is bursting with activity deep inside. Electrons whiz around inside atoms, and a sea of never-resting quarks and gluons populates the nucleons that make up the atomic core.

Meet the Grid

Today's cutting-edge scientific projects are larger, more complex, and more expensive than ever. Grid computing provides the resources that allow researchers to share knowledge, data, and computer processing power across boundaries.

Tom Jordan: Tools for schools

The QuarkNet e-Lab provides teachers and students access to some of the tools that scientists use. The Web-based electronic laboratory helps students and teachers to investigate scientific questions from simple to complex.

Bob Bishop: Scientific computing

The future of science will be driven by the improving performance of accelerators, telescopes, microscopes, spectrometers, and computers. The progress of scientists will depend on how well these instruments leverage each other and the investigation process.

Computing

My first computer, as a child, was a Commodore VIC-20. I learned to program on it but within weeks had exhausted its 5-kilobyte memory.

Robert Lang: Much more than paper hats

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 school–a series of precise folds. But Lang’s designs are far more complex.

LIGO analysis

Scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) are hoping to catch a wave a gravitational one.

Les Cottrell: Bringing the Internet to China

When I was at high school in England my favorite subject was geography/geology. However, fearing that jobs in geology might involve looking for oil in inhospitable places, with few encounters with the opposite sex, I switched to physics.

The grid

The grid provides computing power on demand.

Bottom quark

This memo by John Yoh, written on November 17, 1976, certainly caught the attention of the Columbia-Fermilab-Stony Brook collaboration (Fermilab experiment E288).

Atomic nucleus, not electron