In response to our story "Artifact: Relativator," SLAC physicist and director emeritus W.K.H. "Pief" Panofsky provided us with another type of circular slide rule he has had in his desk since the late 1970s.
Hosting the "Late Show with Leon," Nobel laureate Leon Lederman shared with high school students his top fourteen ways to know you have won the Nobel Prize:
Last October, the front of the SLAC computing center looked like an elaborate children's war game in progress. Ad hoc piles of polystyrene, plastic, wooden pallets, and cardboard created an image of bunkers and trenches in a plastic post-industrial landscape.
Innovative 21st century technology at Argonne National Laboratory is taking researchers back to the 19th century, the 16th century, and even the third millennium BCE.
It looks like a simple silver trailer, but it's more like a shoe store on wheels. Mike Sitarz pulls his metal trailer, better known among Fermilab employees as the "shoemobile," behind the Technical Division industrial buildings at 8 a.m. every Tuesday.
The distinctive and amusing term "barn" originated with two Purdue University physicists working on the Manhattan Project in 1942—and it was classified information by the US government until after World War II.
It took me years to write my three bestselling books on cosmology, mathematics, and cryptography. Yet I am particularly proud of a 500-word article that I wrote last fall in less than an hour and of the hullabaloo that it caused.
In high-energy collisions, luminosity, or beam brightness, isn't the only thing to consider; low background noise at the detectors is also important. When wayward particles bounce around inside detectors, they can mimic real collisions, muddy results, and even damage parts of the collider.
Unveiling the three-dimensional structure of proteins thrills scientists. While the potential for understanding the folding and function of enzymes is truly exciting by itself, exploring macromolecule structures also satisfies a more fundamental urge: to see the invisible.
Collider luminosity is the key to particle physics discoveries. Fermilab and labs around the world have spared no effort in increasing their collider luminosities.
For 33 particle physicists, the year 2005 was a great experiment in science communication. To support the World Year of Physics, these brave souls had agreed to share their thoughts and their lives with the public, blogging on the Quantum Diaries Web site.
If the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC) completes the evolution from physicists' dream to discovery machine, Jonathan Dorfan will know when and where the transforming moment occurred: August 20, 2004, in Beijing, China.
Particle physics detectors in space will record gamma rays in search of dark matter, the evolution of stars, and natures most powerful particle accelerators.
