A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication
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07/01/07

Secrets of a heavyweight

A dozen years after it first appeared on the world stage, the top quark is still one of the hottest topics in particle physics. Why is it so much heavier than any other particle? And what can it tell us about the origin of mass and other quantum mysteries?

Logbook of May 2007
05/01/07

The blue book

Affectionately known at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as simply “The Blue Book,” The Stanford Two-Mile Accelerator has been a classic on site since the day it was published in 1968.

05/01/07

Past and future

I've observed an important relationship between David Harris' intro "Appreciating Successes" and Ray Orbach's "Focus on the Future" in the March issue of symmetry.

05/01/07

Cooking up improvisation

The article (Apr 07) on improvisation in experimental physics was a fascinating one. Along the same lines, I heard that at Cornell (I think), and probably at least one other accelerator, Revereware—copper-bottomed steel cookware—was used to avoid having to make copper to steel welds.

05/01/07

More famous undercited physicists

The numbers on citations and all listed by Heath O'Connell (Mar 07) are exceedingly interesting! The general phenomenon has been known to people working in scientometrics for many decades, and is called "incorporation."

05/01/07

Black holes for beginners

I read the nice article by Jennifer Ouellette "Beginner's mind" in the March 2007 edition with great interest.

05/01/07

Aspirins in times of war

I know of the use of aspirins as water detectors (Apr 07) from my year and a half (June 70 to –Jan 72) in the US Army in the Republic of South Vietnam on the receiving end. I heard from people who had been there in the late 1960s that it had been used then as well.

05/01/07

Nice ice

A recent article by scientists in Leeds and Oslo featured in CERN's "Picked Up for You" might have an answer to Terry Anderson's ice-related question in March's symmetry.

05/01/07

Name that particle

Cartoonist Roz Chast has busted the field of particle physics wide open with her pioneering cover for this issue of symmetry. We say it's about time: Why limit ourselves to the same old list of particles that have actually been discovered, or at least properly theorized?

05/01/07

A tale of dark energy

In the 1990s, astronomical observations revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Not knowing what causes this acceleration, scientists began to attribute the phenomenon to some unknown source of energy, coined "dark energy" by astrophysicist Michael Turner.

05/01/07

Farmers' picnic

Just inside the site boundary, secluded from most of Fermilab, sits Leonard Baumann's rickety red barn. Baumann, like 55 other farmers, relocated 40 years ago to make way for the construction of Fermilab.

05/01/07

Those pesky humans

Lead bricks and radiation gloves normally indicate a need to protect lab workers from radioactivity. For a laboratory at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, however, the opposite is true.

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.