In this, the second in a series of short essays on the known fundamental building blocks of our universe, I will introduce you to a colorful character that has played an ever-evolving role in physics: the *muon*. In units of the electron mass (which I shall here denote me), the […]
Physics
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In this first of a series of informational briefs about the fundamental nature of our universe, I want to discuss the electron. This is the first of the current set of building blocks which was discovered, and is a key player in the field of high-energy physics to this day. […]
This year is the “World Year of Physics”:http://www.physics2005.org/, as declared by the United Nations to honor the memory of Einstein’s “annus mirabilis” of 1905. That was the year that Einstein published his three ground-breaking papers on; (1) the photoelectric effect, establishing the particle or “quantum” nature of light; (2) the […]
My wife and I cozied up on the futon tonight to watch the 10 o’clock airing of “Faith Under Fire” on PAX, a cable TV network with ostensibly religious overtones to its programming. I was interested in seeing how the religious side, represented by its own media, framed this debate. […]
I was a graduate student at the Universe of Wisconsin-Madison from 1998-2004. When I first moved there, I lived in a studio apartment on Spring St., two blocks from the physics department. I also happened to live right behind the geology department. While thumbing through “Yahoo! News”:http://news.yahoo.com tonight when I […]
I am on shift today, here in building 5 (the SLAC accelerator main control center, or MCC). I am filling the shift position referred to as “liaison”, and my job is to make sure that the experiment (Babar) know’s what the accelerator (LINAC and PEP) is doing, and vice versa. […]
This past week was what is usually called “BaBar Collaboration Week”. This is a week of morning to night meetings of the entire collaboration. This typically involves something like 1/3 – 1/2 of the collaboration all showing up at the same location (SLAC) and presenting their progress in research. The […]
After weeks of putting it off, I finally went to the Redwood City Library and picked up my library card. It’s been ready for several weeks, but I just wasn’t making the time for it. However, I am certainly glad I did get it, because it led me to a […]
It’s been a remarkable week. First, I got back into my research at full speed and it felt **great**. Second, the reality of the President’s FY06 budget proposal has hit home. While the U.S. particle physics community, especially the national lab programs, is vigorously discussing the implications, some consequences have […]
I’ve been a bit glum these last few weeks. At first I wasn’t able to exactly pinpoint the problem, but given how well I’ve felt this week I think I’ve figured it out. I needed research, and I needed it **bad**. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed my time at […]
Symmetry Magazine, a joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC, presented its third issue today. The “centerfold” of the issue features a BaBar event containing the Ds*(2317)+ particle, “discovered at BaBar in 2003”:http://www.arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0304021. Thanks to Dr. Antimo Palano, who harvested the particle candidates from BaBar’s immense data set, I was able […]