A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication
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05/01/07

Tesla in paradise

Even in the company of a two-story nose-picking machine, human cupcakes, battling robots, and power-tool drag races, the giant Tesla coil stands out. Maybe it's the loud buzz and crackle of artificial lightning bolts, writhing like fiery serpents from the top of the thing.

05/01/07

Wait just a minute

Berkeley Lab physicist Hitoshi Murayama and SLAC physicist Herman Winick have provided audio segments for One-Minute How-To, a Web site that provides 60-second explanations ranging from "How to write a flawless email," to "How to organize a river clean-up," to "How to sto

05/01/07

Peel and stick

Chip Edstrom routinely tidies the Fermilab Main Control Room to stay awake while working as an accelerator operator on the owl shift. One night, while cleaning equipment and peeling off decades-old labels, Edstrom decided to replace the old ones with fresh ones. In Russian.

An illustration of twisting ropes
05/01/07

String theory

According to string theory, matter is made up of strings.

05/01/07

Pierre Schwob: Launched into science

Sputnik, the first satellite sent into Earth orbit, was launched October 4, 1957, –my 11th birthday, so I remember the date. It was also the first time I found my father seemingly interested in science and technology.

05/01/07

Ken McMullen: Arrows of time

Ken McMullen says he does not feel comfortable with categories. That's why when, given a choice between defining himself as a painter or a film-maker, he prefers to be called an artist instead.

05/01/07

Katie & Adam Yurkewicz: Bon voyage

In August 2006, after almost a year of preparation, we packed up all our belongings to move from Batavia, Illinois, to Geneva, Switzerland. We were following our particle physics careers from Fermilab to CERN, the European particle physics lab.

05/01/07

When the new neighbor's a giant

Mike Herlihy is active in the village of North Aurora, near Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and west of Chicago. He’s been a village trustee for six years, belongs to the Lions Club and served on an advisory committee to evaluate a proposed freeway.

05/01/07

The great string debate

Inside, the auditorium at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, was packed and humming in anticipation. Outside, a man waved a sign at stragglers hurrying for the door: "Need One Ticket for String Theory Debate."

05/01/07

The search for dark energy

What is this stuff that fills the vacuum of space, accelerates the expansion of the universe, and accounts for 70 percent of everything? More than two dozen experiments aim to find out.

05/01/07

A public hunger for physics

Does the public care about particle physics? In this issue of symmetry we read about a few cases that hint the answer is yes.

Logbook of April 2007
04/01/07

PET scan

Scientists have sought to create better medical imaging techniques ever since Wilhelm Röntgen’s 1896 discovery that X-rays can reveal bones and other anatomical structures in a noninvasive way.

04/01/07

Slippery science

Why is ice slippery? Alain Haché has two kinds of first-hand knowledge. A veteran amateur hockey goalie, he learned to skate outdoors on frozen ponds.

04/01/07

Walkway to heaven

The Temple of Heaven, a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design in Beijing, symbolizes the relationship between Earth and heaven—human society and the universe—which stands at the heart of Chinese cosmology.

04/01/07

You wanted what?

Sometimes even the language of mathematics isn't universal. This realization came during March at the German lab DESY where a party was thrown by the Asian ECal team in thanks for the use of the DESY Calorimeter Group's test beam.