It’s gearing up to be a rich spring, and a richer summer. Winter and Summer are the times of year most densely populated by high-energy physics conferences. The biggies for my field are the winter-time Moriond QCD (Quantum Chromodynamics) and EW (ElectroWeak) conferences, followed usually in the late spring/early summer […]
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 […]
There’s a lot going on in our nation right now regarding the pushing of faith into the science classroom. As a scientist, I am watching this issue with great concern. Although the struggle over the content of science class challenges primarily my colleagues in biology and medicine (i.e. those who […]
The Dope on Runners Athletics in the U.S. has recently been put under a microscope, and why not? Olympic runners accused of doping, baseball superstars telling all about their steroid use. Let’s face it, U.S. athletics has become as disgraceful as English football. Now, according to a study published in […]
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 […]
First the scientists noted that the U.S. was cutting back to dangerous levels the funding for basic science. Then industry noticed, and in conjunction with academia issued the “Future of Innovation Report”:http://www.futureofinnovation.org listing the warning signs of bad things to come. Now it seems the press is taking note of […]
If ever the addage that “size doesn’t matter” needed illustration, I think we’ve found it the story of the “4.4 billion year-old speck on display at the UW Madison Geology Museum”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=753&e=5&u=/ap/20050411/ap_on_sc/oldest_object. I mentioned this a few days ago, and lamented that the scientists involved felt a bit shameful about 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 picking about in the internet, checking out some of the places I don’t usually go. One of those is the “Discovery Institute”:http://www.discovery.org, the leading institution pushing the philosophy of “intelligent design”. Intelligent design has so far only been an attempt to veil creationism as pseudoscience, claiming that the […]
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. […]