Ron Badger is standing inside what looks like a cave, but is actually the windowless belly of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center’s Building 136. And just like a cave, the thick cement walls make cell phones go dead at the threshold. Badger is standing near a stack of black receivers as he picks up his radio and calls to someone half way across campus. They answer back loud and clear.
The SLAC radio and pager system allows employees and visitors to communicate 40 feet below ground in the accelerator tunnels, inside the PEP and SLD ring tunnels, and out to the far corners of the campus. It all works through a simple set of relays.
If Mike Harms is above ground trying to send a page or communicate by radio with Badger who is in the tunnels of the accelerator or inside a dense building, his radio will broadcast a signal that gets picked up by one of three large antennae on campus. They are located at the repeater Building 443 (on the hill above the research yard), at Building 136, and at Sector 1 of the linac. The signal is captured by the antennae, which runs it through a system of cables that extend through many tunnels and buildings on campus. The cable releases the radio wave-or “leaks” it-into the tunnel where Badger’s radio picks it up.
To send a message back up to Harms, Badger’s radio sends a signal that is picked up by the same leaky cable that delivered the incoming message. This multipurpose leaky cable will also redistribute Badger’s message throughout the tunnel, so other people underground can talk to him as well. The cable then carries the signal back to one of the same three antennae, where the signal prepares to be broadcast above ground.
The cable takes the signal to a “voter” receiver, which actually does some voting. As a radio wave is sent out from a radio, it may enter more than one receiver. If all of these signals were to be broadcast, they would overlap and cause interference, making for bad reception. So the voter receiver decides which signal is strongest and sends that input up to the main antenna, where it is broadcast across the campus. In this way, Badger’s outgoing radio signal makes its way to Harms’ radio.
A few months ago we ran a story in symmetry on bad physics in movies and TV, and how scientists, working as consultants, try to set things right. So I was pleased to find, via Talk Like a Physicist, a lengthy and impressive compilation of the Anime Laws of Physics:
#2 - Law of Differentiated Gravitation: Whenever someone or something jumps, is thrown, or otherwise is rendered airborne, gravity is reduced by a factor of 4.
#46 - Law of Flimsy Incognition: (from Conrad Knauer) Simply changing into a costume or wearing a teensy mask can make you utterly unrecognizable to even your closest friends and relatives.
#3 - Law of Sonic Amplification, First Law of Anime Acoustics: In space, loud sounds, like explosions, are even louder because there is no air to get in the way.
#6 - Law of Temporal Variability: Time is not a constant. Time stops for the hero whenever he does something ‘cool’ or ‘impressive’. Time slows down when friends and lovers are being killed and speeds up whenever there is a fight.
#12 - Law of Phlogistatic Emission: Nearly all things emit light from fatal wounds.
#26 - Law of Feline Mutation
(from A. Hicks)
Any half-cat/half-human mutation will invariably: 1) be female, 2) will possess ears and sometimes a tail as a genetic mutation, 3) wear as little clothing as possible, if any
The intro to the list, which was created by Ryan Shellito and Darrin Bright, notes that the laws of physics are somewhat different in anime than they are in American cartoons. Snuffing around a bit, I found this helpful guide to Cartoon Laws of Physics:
Cartoon Law I
Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.
Cartoon Law VII
Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l’oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall’s surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space.
Cartoon Law VIII
Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent. Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.
Corollary: A cat will assume the shape of its container.
CERN today issued an update of their safety report for the LHC as part of an LHC status update. The safety report reaffirms and extends the conclusions of the 2003 report: that the LHC collisions present no danger and there is no reason for concern. The essential conclusion is that any dangerous scenario that could present itself would have already occurred in nature, but the continued existence of Earth and the universe indicate that there is no danger from these hypothetical mechanisms.
Observations of a quasar about 6 billion light years from Earth have shown that one of the fundamental properties of physics is the same there as here. Astrophysicists measured the ratio of the electron mass to the proton mass in the distant quasar and found the protons there are 1836.15 more massive than the electrons, the same value as here on Earth now.
The work, published this afternoon online in Science magazine, was done by an international team of astrophysicists and astronomers, led by Michael Murphy of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. Murphy’s work has received a lot of attention in the past over his investigations of whether what we assume are fundamental constants of the universe are indeed constant throughout time and space.
In this research, the astrophysicists looked at light coming from a quasar called B0218+367. In particular, they looked at the frequency of light coming from the quasar and passing through ammonia gas in a galaxy between the quasar and Earth. That gas absorbs some of the quasar light at a frequency that depends on the properties of the atom, including the ratio of the electron mass to the proton mass. To measure the ratio of proton to electron masses precisely, the astrophysicists had to compare the ammonia frequency measurement with that of light coming from other molecules. Having completed those measurements, they could put a precise value on the ratio of the masses.
It might not seem all that interesting to show that the laws of physics are the same everywhere, but it is a fundamental assumption of physics and all assumptions need to be tested. Furthermore, there had been some evidence that the assumed “constants” of nature had changed over time. Murphy and colleagues point out that this new result is inconsistent with previous results that hinted at changes in this ratio over time.
The result is not the end of the exploration as the precision of the measurement can be improved significantly, and there is still wiggle room for some change to have occurred. As theories of physics become more precise, physicists need to test their assumptions more precisely.
One of the loveliest pieces of technology in high-energy physics is the superconducting cavity, whose highly polished metal bulbs, strung like pearls, would seem at home in an art gallery. The cavities are at the heart of FLASH, the Free-Electron Laser in Hamburg; the European X-Ray Free Electron Laser, which starts construction early next year at Germany’s DESY lab; and the proposed International Linear Collider. Unfortunately for the beholder, these beauties ultimately vanish into fancy chillers, known as cryomodules, that keep them at temperatures close to absolute zero. This allows the cavities to conduct electrical current without resistance and thus accelerate subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light with maximum efficiency. (For a more detailed explanation of how cryomodules work, see this deconstruction in the Oct/Nov 2006 symmetry.)
Particle physicists have the reputation that they need to smash things up in order to find out what they are about. Sometimes accelerator physicists get to smash stuff up, too: a group of engineers and technicians recently crash-tested a full cryomodule. They wanted to find out what the 12-metre piece of kit would look like if somebody happened to use the beam pipe as a stepladder, drive a tunnel vehicle into a flange or decide to rip out a vacuum pump.
A module-shaped crash test dummy in the test bench.
Helium escapes through a safety flap of the crash test cryomodule’s safety valve which protects the 2K cavity helium volume inside the cryomodule against too much pressure. Click here to download the video (3.5 MB).
For those readers who don’t have much patience: sorry, the module would not look much different from the outside—the test showed that they are rather robust. For all those who want to know more: here’s more. The worst thing that can happen to a cooled cryomodule under vacuum is for the different vacuum systems to break down.
When the engineers put room-temperature air into parts of the cryomodule, ”there was a rather loud noise and a massive cloud of helium at the safety valves,” said the crash test initiator, Bernd Petersen. The noise apparently came from air whooshing in at nearly the speed of sound. But damage was minor, and the team was surprised and happy to learn that it would take as long as five seconds for warm air to travel from one side of the module to the other–potentially enough warning to close valves and keep damage from spreading.
The Egyptians built pyramids to honor their pharaohs. The Greeks built temples to honor their gods. So why shouldn’t particle physicists construct office buildings (even if virtually) to honor the prize of their scientific quests.
During the last few months in physics talks about the search for the mysterious Higgs boson at Fermilab’s CDF and DZero experiments, a Photoshopped version of the laboratory’s signature Wilson Hall has cropped up. The photo shows the building, which normally resembles the aperture of a dipole magnet used to steer a particle beam, turned into a giant letter “H”.
This is not the first mouse pad make over for the 15-story building. Around the time the top quark was discovered by CDF and DZero, a similar tweaked photo of Wilson Hall appeared in various physics presentations and referenced in the blog “A Quantum Diaries Survivor“. At that time, Wilson Hall resembled a lower case “t”.
If you have seen any similar visual tricks done to other buildings used in physics talks, send images to letters@symmetrymagazine.org. We’d love to take a look, and maybe share them with our readers.
Wilson Hall: the original
Wilson Hall as a t for the top quark, discovered at Fermilab
Physicist Patricia Rankin asserts that there is no glass ceiling that blocks women’s advances to the top levels of physics. Nor is the problem a career pipeline that leaks women at every junction until, by the end, there are very few left; actual career paths are not so straightforward. No, the situation is much more complicated, she said at an April networking luncheon for women in physics (see her full remarks here).
What they face instead is a series of obstacles at each career stage that are negotiable but which take more effort for women to make their way through than men. Making it to the top requires overcoming accumulated disadvantage…A recent book (Through the Labyrinth by Eagly and Carli) likened the path that women have to take to a labyrinth that can be navigated but leaves many wondering if it is worth the time and effort. So we are replacing the (perhaps appealing) model that suggests the lack of women can be fixed by removing a final barrier with one that argues that we need to intervene at many more career stages and make much more widespread changes.
Rankin is vice chancellor for faculty diversity and development at the University of Colorado, Boulder. As a graduate student based at Imperial College in London she began working at SLAC in 1978. She went on to complete a postdoc at the lab, working with the Mark II detector and the B factory. After getting tenure at Boulder and serving for a couple of years as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, Rankin was awarded an NSF ADVANCE Institutional Transformation grant and set about improving the climate for women on the Boulder campus.
At a SLAC colloquium last week, Rankin presented evidence for the labyrinth-as-obstacle view of things.
There is no single, clear-cut reason why so few women make it to the top levels of physics, she said. Some of the evidence is anecdotal or ethnographic, and comes without error bars. This makes it necessary to combine information from many sources.
Further, it takes about a generation for demographic changes to percolate through the system. By one calculation, an instantaneous change in the makeup of the applicant pool from 20 percent to 50 percent would result in about a 4.2 percent change in the makeup of a department over five years, if hiring held steady.
Given the amount of time and work that goes into becoming a physicist, some people have argued that women are too smart to want to go to all that trouble, Rankin said. “That’s the only argument I’ve heard that says physicists aren’t smart,” she said, to laughter from the audience.
However, studies of what people look for in their careers show no differences between men and women, she said. Half of people entering law and medicine–both of which require lengthy training–are women. And gender differences in SAT scores are dwarfed by the differences between nationalities.
Some of the studies that show bias against women are old; for instance, a study concluding that people are more likely to attribute women’s success to luck and men’s to skill dates back more than 30 years. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re outdated, Rankin told me later. Subsequent research has tended to confirm and elucidate these results. She said that what people find most upsetting is that the evidence indicates that, despite all efforts, the playing field for women is still not even.
“It’s a hard thing for many of us to accept, because most of us are brought up to believe very strongly that science is a meritocracy,” she told me Friday. “Things are improving, but very slowly, because of the demographic inertia effect.”
She cites a Swedish study of postdoctoral applicants, published in Nature in 1997, that examined an elaborate system set up to guarantee fairness when selecting from a pool of candidates. Each candidate received a competence rating based on objective factors. While men’s ratings could be predicted by the number of papers they had published in leading journals, the study concluded that a female applicant needed at least 100 of these “impact points” to rate as highly as a man with 40 points.
Bias is not limited to men, Rankin said. Both men and women are susceptible to “gender schema,” ingrained notions about how an individual will behave based on the perceived behavior of a group. For instance, when researchers showed people photos of men and women who were carefully chosen to be of equal height, they estimated that the men were taller, which is true of the population as a whole. Leadership qualities–strength, decisiveness, assertiveness, charisma–tend to be associated with men, and come out of a military model of leadership. Women are expected to put more time into nurturing relationships in the workplace. If they don’t, they pay a penalty; if they do, they’re seen as less assertive. This “damned if you do, doomed if you don’t” dilemma is played out in ways large and small: While a man gets extra points for remembering an administrative assistant’s birthday, for instance, a women gets docked if she doesn’t.
Thus the labyrinth. Navigating it takes energy. Veering off into another metaphor, it’s as if men and women are running the same race but the hurdles for women are just a bit higher: “You’re spending your energy jumping those hurdles, so you have less energy to do other things.”
Rankin said changing the culture requires fixing things at multiple levels. Careers in science now work if you follow all the rules perfectly–taking the right courses early enough and proceeding smoothly from graduate school to postdoc and on through the tenure track. Once someone exits this classic career pipeline–to raise children, for instance–they find it hard, if not impossible, to get back in.
To change that, she said, the field needs interventions that make things better for everyone and that are everyone’s responsibility. At Boulder, for instance, people on the tenure track who wanted to take family or medical leave used to have to ask that the tenure clock be stopped; now it’s stopped automatically. “That has made a dramatic difference in the use of that policy,” Rankin told me, “I suspect because it’s changed what the status quo is and what the expectation is.”
She told the SLAC audience that people need to learn about the effects of gender schemas on their thinking. They need to make sure that those entering the field are “networked, mentored, included, advised, coached”–especially important for women, she said, because in a field where they constitute a small minority they get less informal mentoring than men do.
Institutions also need to evaluate the civility of their environments: Are meetings called at times that conflict with family obligations? Are people called on uncivil behavior? Who is responsible for doing that?
“I was delighted to hear that there’s a code of conduct here,” she said of SLAC. “This is a civil environment.”
I thought the ending of her April talk offered a nice summation of her point of view:
The time has come for us to admit the failings of the classical system and start thinking like modern physicists. We need to acknowledge that multiple paths may be followed (some more probable than others) and take a quantum mechanical approach that allows people to tunnel into or back into physics careers through classically forbidden regions–like taking extended time off for parental leave.
Does science have to be 24/7? Have we have traded quality for quantity? Do people have to be full-time researchers? Do we want to give up on people that need to work at a reduced level for any reason? Can people come into the field after a bachelor’s degree in history? Could we develop an accelerated curriculum to help people who decide on physics later in life or people who want to come back in? Can we give graduate students funded parental leave? To use another analogy from Hewlett–if we think of a physics career as a highway–can we add on ramps instead of only having off ramps?
Rankin sent me a list of recommended readings, including the work by Sylvia Ann Hewlett that she refers to above; you can see it below. Also of interest: the American Physical Society’s best practices for recruiting and retaining women in physics.
The rate at which certain unstable atoms decay can be affected by neutrino mixing, according to a recent experiment at the Experimental Storage Ring (ESR) of the GSI nuclear physics laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany. What should be a relatively straightforward tale of radioactive decay is complicated by the role of quantum physics. The process could provide physicists with a new way of measuring neutrinos.
Radioactive decay is a fundamentally random process. However, when you look at a large number of decaying atoms, you see characteristic patterns that reveal the rules behind the randomness. The rule for radioactive decay is pretty simple: the probability of an atom decaying in a given period of time is a certain constant number for each species of atom. However, that simple rule can lead to behavior that seems complicated.
For example, imagine you have a radioactive atom that has a 10 percent chance of decaying in any one second period. If you start with 100 of those atoms, then after one second, you would expect 10 to have decayed and to have 90 left. For those remaining 90 atoms, they still each have a 10 percent chance of decay in the following second-the chance of decay in any particular second does not increase as time goes on. So after two seconds, we expect another nine decays, leaving 81 undecayed atoms. And so the process goes. This leads to what is called an exponential decay curve which, for a large number of atoms, is a nice smooth curve that tells you how many atoms are left in the sample.
In the experiments at GSI, praesodymium-140 and promethium-142 decay rates were measured but there wasn’t a smooth exponential decay. Instead, there were periodic bumps in each of the graphs. The number of decays each second rose and fell over a cycle about 7 seconds long, but superimposed on the overall exponential decay. The experimenters went to great lengths to rule out any kinds of effects from the equipment they were using and were led to conclude that the variation is due to neutrinos.
The basic idea of the process is this: The radioactive atom starts with all but one of its electrons stripped away (partly for ease of measuring phenomena such as this). A process called electron capture occurs, in which the remaining electron is absorbed into the nucleus, turning a proton into a neutron. (It’s the opposite of beta decay.) At the end of this process, an electron neutrino is also emitted, although there is no attempt to measure that neutrino directly.
This should be a straightforward process with no real opportunity for neutrino mixing to play a role, and no reason for the odd bumps in the decay pattern. However, quantum mechanics rears its head due to the particular configuration of this experiment. (Some readers will have noticed that quantum mechanics already comes into this to produce the randomness of the decays in the first place, but here we are talking about an additional role for quantum physics.)
Because the neutrino is never detected and the energy and momentum of the atoms are never measured precisely enough, quantum mechanics allows the decay to happen via a number of different paths involving different neutrino states but which cannot, even in principle, be differentiated. Precisely because the scientists can’t look at all the internal workings of the decay, extra quantum stuff can go on.
The different paths to decay involve different energies of the neutrino states, and that means, because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the timing of the decays can be affected. So as the different types of neutrino get mixed together in this hidden process (just as happens on larger scale neutrino oscillation experiments), that mixing is converted into oscillations of decay time. It is that oscillation which is observed in the GSI experiments. The period of oscillation is determined by how much the neutrinos mix together. Future theoretical calculations should be able to match up what is expected with what is measured.
Of course, this is a very complicated process and the experimenters don’t know for sure that this is the actual process. However it seems reasonable based on a toy model created by Harry Lipkin, which indicates that experimenters should expect to see the strange bumps with approximately this period in the decay.
The most exciting aspect of this work for many people interested in neutrinos is that it provides physicists with an entirely new technique to measure properties of neutrinos that is complementary to the large long-baseline neutrino oscillations experiments and other large-scale experiments.
Albert Einstein agonized that his special theory of relativity enabled the creation of the atomic bomb. He would not have wanted to hand another theory with military applications to a still violent world, particularly if that theory leads to production of a weapon more powerful than the A-bomb.
Yet, the love of knowledge likely would prevent Einstein from destroying such a successful theory.
So what would Einstein do?
Mark Alpert has an enticing theory of his own that Einstein did succeed in his two-decade quest to prove the Theory of Everything before his death in 1955. That theory, often termed the “Holy Grail” of physics, would remove the uncertainty in the universe, making it predictable. If Einstein succeeded, Alpert theorized, Einstein would tell his students to keep the theory secret until mankind could keep from blowing itself up.
“I can imagine a scenario where he would tell his assistants to just wait until there is a world government,” Alpert said. “These men would wait their entire lives. That is the sad part. You could argue that the world is worse off now.”
In Alpert’s book Final Theory released June 3, he mixes abbreviated particle physics lessons, with action-packed shoot outs and car chases as he explains a the attempt by a history of science professor to piece together the theory. Evil-doers race the professor to find the former students and mathematical equations of the theory to use it to build the most powerful weapon the world has ever seen. The two quests collide at the United States’ premier high-energy physics laboratory, Fermilab.
Why high-energy particle physics?
HEP provides an atypical setting for a fiction thriller, but Alpert views it as the perfect vehicle to introduce people to some of the real-life science theories and technological advances that he reports on as an editor of Scientific American. Many of the science fiction attractions of the past have become the doable science of the present.
“I think there is a huge increase in interest in [high-energy physics],” Alpert said. “Look at all the people who are interested in the LHC. I recently was at the World Science Festival. It was packed. And most of these people were not scientists. They don’t understand the math. I don’t understand the math. When I edit articles for Scientific American, I don’t put the math in, but people like the excitement of science. I think people key in on that.”
Unfortunately, a small segment of those people–especially mainstream media—key in on the excitement of far-fetched hypothesis of physics-powered catastrophes such as the lawsuit alleging the LHC startup will create a black hole that will swallow the Earth, he added.
Alpert scoffs at the idea. His book aims to promote science not mislead people into believing experiments, rather than their applications, are dangerous.
“In my book, the theory is dangerous. It is not the experiment itself that is dangerous. It is the military application of the theory that is dangerous.
“I don’t want to ever tell anyone we should not do research.” Alpert said.
“The message is: Let’s work on our humanity before the technology advances. The sad part is people can use research for military purposes. We should grow up as a species.”
Alpert, who received a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from Princeton University, uses the scientific inquiries of his main character, a “lapsed physicist”, to impart lessons about the universe, science and the drought of US funding for scientific programs, particularly at Fermilab.
Readers should not get intimidated. The science comes in easily digestible bites mixed in with international espionage, strip clubs, and skin heads.
“It is mostly a thriller. A lot of car chases. I gave it to a 14-year-old son of a friend of mine to read, and he loved it,” Alpert said. You don’t even need a high school degree to read it.”
Why write about Fermilab?
The idea for the novel sprang out of research Alpert was doing on Einstein for Scientific American, as well as a trip to Fermilab to research a story on the shift to neutrino research.
In his first trip to the Batavia, Illinois, laboratory in 2006, Alpert was wowed by different approaches of how to find physics beyond the Standard Model, the current recipe for matter and the forces of nature.
At the energy frontier, the Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, and its two four-story detectors, CDF and DZero, produce and analyze sprays of millions of particles each second from collisions at nearly the speed of light. The particles could hold the key to extra dimensions and new never-before-seen constituents of matter. Those particles are the same that existed a fraction of a second after the big bang and eventually combined to form the world we see.
At the intensity frontier, Alpert toured the BooNE/MiniBooNE experiment, which studies antineutrino events, where the world’s least understood fundamental particle morphs into its own antiparticle. That could produce a possible key to how antimatter switched to matter 14 billion years ago, creating the universe filled with planets.
“In the back of my mind, I was thinking this is great thriller material. It is very James Bond. There is so much going on here,” Alpert said.
The Tevatron control room, CDF collision hall, accelerator tunnels, Wilson hall, and MiniBooNE’s 40-foot-in-diameter detector filled with mineral oil–a flammable, dense material –create high-tech, unique settings for the book’s climax.
Alpert incorporated as many experiment specifics as possible into the novel to avoid the criticism of taking too much literary leeway, such as received by the book Angels and Demons set at the European high-energy physics laboratory CERN.
“I tried really hard to make it accurate, but for narrative reasons I changed little stuff,” he said. To help the villains, a supply closet materializes near the CDF collision hall and the MiniBooNE detector opens easier than usual.
CERN, which will have a beam seven times the power of the Tevatron, has captured the imagination of the world and could have provided Alpert’s setting. But he wasn’t seduced by the new experiment on the block.
“I was just so impressed with the Tevatron,” he said. The accelerator performs at near perfection; 300 times better than expected in the original design. “Until the LHC comes on, this is the most powerful (accelerator) in the world, and there may still be some amazing physics to come out of here in the next few years.”
MiniBooNE, an example of neutrino research, not done at CERN’s LHC, also provides another portal to physics that could change forever the way we understand our world.
“I really had so much fun on the tour and the excitement that is going on there,” he added. “I tried to inject that into the book.”
See the Web site about the book, including the science behind the book and Fermilab’s role in the setting.
Here is a video of Mark Alpert talking about Final Theory
Here is the text of the news release NASA issued about the launch of the joint Department of Energy/NASA mission:
CAPE CANAVERAL AIR FORCE STATION, Fla. — NASA’s Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, successfully launched aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:05 p.m. EDT today.
The GLAST observatory separated from the second stage of the Delta II at 1:20 p.m. and the flight computer immediately began powering up the components necessary to control the satellite. Twelve minutes after separating from the launch vehicle, both GLAST solar arrays were deployed. The arrays immediately began producing the power necessary to maintain the satellite and instruments. The operations team continues to check out the spacecraft subsystems.
“The entire GLAST Team is elated the observatory is now on-orbit and all systems continue to operate as planned,” said GLAST program manager Kevin Grady of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
After a 75-minute flight, the GLAST spacecraft was deployed into low Earth orbit. It will begin to transmit initial instrument data after about three weeks. The telescope will explore the most extreme environments in the universe, searching for signs of new laws of physics and investigating what composes mysterious dark matter. It will seek explanations for how black holes accelerate immense jets of material to nearly light speed, and look for clues to crack the mysteries behind powerful explosions known as gamma-ray bursts.
“After a 60-day checkout and initial calibration period, we’ll begin science operations,” said Steve Ritz, GLAST project scientist at Goddard. “GLAST soon will be telling scientists about many new objects to study, and this information will be available on the internet for the world to see.”
NASA’s GLAST mission is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.
Ron Badger is standing inside what looks like a cave, but is actually the windowless belly of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center’s Building 136. And just like a cave, the thick cement walls make cell phones go dead at the threshold. Badger is standing near a stack of black receivers as he picks up his radio and calls to someone half way across campus. They answer back loud and clear.
