Archive

03/01/05

EPP2010

The National Academy of Sciences has charged a group of scientists, the "Elementary Particle Physics in the 21st Century" (EPP2010) committee, with "prioritizing the scientific questions and opportunities that define elementary-particle physics." Importantly, half the committe

02/01/05

Special relativity

Einstein had promised but later refused to publish this 1912 expository treatise, his earliest known manuscript on special relativity. No original manuscripts survive for the articles of Einsteins 1905 annus mirabilis.

02/01/05

Robert Bluhm: The death of common sense

Prior to the development of special relativity, the laws of physics and the laws of common sense were practically one and the same. Measurements of space and time were absolute. There were no limits in principle on how fast a person could travel.

02/01/05

Dimitri A. Dimitroyannis: Grid to fight cancer

Radiotherapy Grid computing offers an application of high-energy physics research-work- still-in-progress with tangible and immediate clinical utility to the one million Americans who will be treated with radiotherapy next year.

02/01/05

symmetry vs. vikings

Out here in rural Stearns County, Minnesota, I have taken to leaving my copy of symmetry on the coffee table. Then when people ask, “Say, what is this all about?” I casually reply, “Oh, that's a little magazine that Fermilab and SLAC send me every month. Would you like to read it?”

02/01/05

Pixel art

Inspired by the pixel structure of far away objects in astronomical images, artist Tim Otto Roth uses live scientific data to create visions of science in action.

02/01/05

Hot relationships

The growing relationship of astrophysics and particle physics is a hot topic these days. In addition to the appearance of new faces and institutions at the labs, the growth of this area of research can actually be seen in the references of particle physics papers.

02/01/05

SLAC race

The near-perfect weather in California inspires many SLAC employees to enjoy jogging and walking at lunch time. The long, straight stretch beside the world's longest building, the klystron gallery of the two-mile Stanford Linear Accelerator, seems to compel exercise.

02/01/05

Einstein vs. Godzilla: The Green Guy Wins

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.

02/01/05

Reviewed: Debunked!

I know you pretty well: Sometimes you are extroverted, affable and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, cautious and reserved.

02/01/05

Night shift

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.

02/01/05

E=mc2

Your car, and virtually all other activity on Earth, is ultimately powered by Einstein’s most famous equation.

02/01/05

Allan Weisbecker: A dilettante at SLAC

It's my first day visiting SLAC—I'm researching a movie script wherein the main character is a physicist—and I'm riding the Stanford shuttle bus to meet some physicists. There's one other passenger, a studious-looking fellow with a briefcase.

02/01/05

Quantum Diaries

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.

02/01/05

Beyond the Standard Model

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?

02/01/05

Let it rain

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.