Archive

07/01/07

Plans for antimatter

Congratulations to 12-year-old Austin Ellsworth on his fun model of a linear accelerator (symmetry, Mar 2007). However, using antimatter for fueling spaceships or energy storage, as in Dan Brown's book Angels and Demons, will never happen.

07/01/07

Call to action:  Help us compile a physics life list 

Bird watchers have life lists of sightings. We think fans of particle physics need a checklist of their own, full of not-to-be missed places, experiences, and artifacts.

07/01/07

MacGyver ethics

Regarding “Masters of improv” (symmetry, April 2007) I have one question. The article quotes former Fermilab director Leon Lederman as saying, “without explanation, we took the student's experiment apart. He started crying, as he should have.” Was the student compensated for his loss?

07/01/07

Antimatter: pro or anti?

In the April 2007 edition a letter was printed debunking the idea of antimatter-powered spaceships. The argument was that since antimatter is so difficult and expensive to produce, this use is impractical.

07/01/07

Particle sudoku

Sudoku is so 2005, but this logic puzzle still has plenty of fans. Invented in 1979 by an American, the puzzle really took off in Japan. In the years since, it has distracted aficionados daily, appearing in the pages of newspapers worldwide alongside the traditional crossword puzzle.

07/01/07

Run, Rabbit, run

The problem: How to get short-lived radioactive drugs from the nuclear physics lab that makes them to a hospital 2.5 kilometers away, on the far side of a busy campus, in two minutes flat.

07/01/07

Rig, and rig alike

When objects weighing thousands of pounds have to be moved, the call goes out to riggers— specialized teams that work with hoists and cranes. They’re required to wear proper safety gear; and at some point, the riggers at SLAC decided to make a statement with their helmets.

07/01/07

Cordless juice

Peter Fisher was in the audience when Marin Soljacic, a fellow physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a lunchtime talk about a technology that could transform consumer electronics.

07/01/07

Russian quiz champ

What? An intellectual game show. Where? Based in Russia and played all around the world. When? Since 1986.

07/01/07

Pesky invaders

An overgrown zebra mussel population at Fermilab received a rude awaking when operations engineers treated the lab’s water cooling system in early June to remove nearly 4000 pounds of mussels.

07/01/07

Speed: It’s not just for particles

In pursuit of high velocities, a group of Fermilab physicists has found an unusual outlet: They race a dragon boat.

07/01/07

Particle event

Scientists call the particle collisions and interactions they study “particle events.”

07/01/07

Anne Mary Teichert: For Fermilab visitors, a sense of wonder

People visit Fermilab for many reasons. For those with an interest in physics or engineering, the draw, of course, is the chance to see Fermilab’s equipment up close and the opportunity to sample life at a great laboratory.

07/01/07

Chalkboard

Chalkboard discussions usually arise spontaneously, with one person explaining something to a small group standing nearby. Scratchings on the board tend to represent fragments of a conversation rather than a complete train of thought.

07/01/07

Roshan Houshmand: PRIMAL trails

It began with a guest speaker in her small upstate New York town. Roshan Houshmand’s uncles were visiting, and because of their engineering background, she thought a talk on physics would be ideal for a night of entertainment.

07/01/07

Industry eyes the next big collider

With a blue marker poised at a large white flip chart, Maury Tigner, a physicist at Cornell University, turned to a group of about 10 representatives from industry and asked, “What kind of applications interest your company?” The room was cramped and beige, a generic hotel meeting spa