Tonight is very likely my last shift on the BaBar experiment. I just got the baton from the penultimate liaison shifter, my colleague Jose, and here I sit. The usual Liaison console has been commandeered by the staff of the PEP operations crew. There’s a buzz in the room. The […]
Physics
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On the recent SLAC/Fermilab/U.S. LHC trip to Washington D.C., a challenge was put to us: high-energy physics, as a field, needs a “Theory of Spinoffs”. We sell our field based on the compelling nature of the science, and it’s a great story. But, went the argument, the Congress (and […]
Today and tomorrow are the last scheduled shifts for the Babar experiment. I have the pleasure of being on shift as the Liaison yet again, sitting in the main accelerator control room and passing information between Babar and the accelerator operators. Jodi came with me and baked a bunch of […]
This week got kicked off with the news of a lawsuit, filed in Hawaii, to stop the turn on of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The week got weirder. The story got some traction on the comedy show circuit. “The Daily Show” and “Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me” both […]
This weekend marks the final shifts of the BaBar experiment and the final operations of the PEP-II collider. The last few months have been among the most personally exciting time of my life, a time in collider physics that I had been led to believe was long dead. Of course, […]
An article in today’s NY Times, forwarded to me by a friend, notes that the LHC may face a threat other than the realities of a slipping schedule when building a one-of-a-kind, frontier physics experiment: the law. That’s right! THE LAW. [1] Specifically, a lawsuit brought in a Hawaiian court […]
It seems that every time WMAP releases a fresh analysis of its latest data, I learn something wholly new about the universe. Last week, WMAP released an analysis of five years of data [1]. The results are particularly interesting to me on one front – the cosmic neutrino background. On […]
Well, we went from the summer of nuts, to the winter of insane, to the fast-paced late-winter of WTF. I’ve been cutting non-essential things out of my life as a result, including this blog. Oh well – last to the table, first out the door. Today, however, I’ve been forcing […]
Bob Park is normally funny to read every Friday, either because you agree with him rabidly or because you don’t agree with him but you find his grouchiness lovable . This week, he’s just plain on target. Here are his opening paragraphs, verbatim: 1. HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS: SANK IN “THE GATHERING […]
One day ago, the unthinkable happened: Congress abandoned all signs of reason and passed an omnibus spending bill that gutted science in this nation. Much is clear, and much is not. What’s clear are the facts. The Office of Science was appropriated $4.05 billion, and then asked to apply a […]
This is an exciting time for the BaBar experiment. We have just completed our last shutdown between run periods, where we performed a series of maintenance tasks and small upgrades and the accelerator performed a series of engineering upgrades. This three month down-time was the last chance to make major […]
OK, maybe it’s a little much. But, I have to say that this collaboration meeting has been a real high when it comes to physics. Not only is BaBar in the first stages of Run 7, a solid 10-month run from now until next October, but there is so much […]