A New Leader for CERN
In his first few months on the job, CERN Director-General Rolf-Dieter Heuer opens new lines of communication, oversees repairs to the Large Hadron Collider, and promotes a worldwide strategy for particle physics based on a strong mix of global, regional, and national projects.
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Editorial:
Particle Physics RevitalizedParticle physics feels like a different enterprise compared with one year ago. Rapid scientific progress and a new budget scenario have enlivened the field.
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Commentary:
Pier Oddone"When questions arise about how the Higgs boson connects to buying another bag of groceries, we need to pay attention, because our fellow tax-paying citizens are the ones who pay the bills for US particle physics. They have a right to know what they are getting."
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Departments:
Signal to BackgroundThe real world of Angels & Demons; CMS digs Roman history; sand and silence in Morocco; carpenters carve an ATLAS; battle of the buzzer at SLAC; what's in your office?
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Department:
symmetry breakingA summary of recent stories, published weekdays, in symmetry breaking, www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/
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Feature:
Chasing Charm in ChinaAmerican scientists are flocking to the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, whose recent upgrades make it the premier place to study charm quarks and their kin.
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Feature:
Credit Where Credit is DueIn the swirling sea of thousands of people who contribute to a major particle physics experiment, how can a young physicist pop to the surface and get noticed? An international committee offers ideas.
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Gallery:
Sergio CittolinA physicist sketches science in the style of Leonardo da Vinci.
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Deconstruction:
Standard Model DiscoveriesSixteen elementary types of particles form the basis for the theoretical framework known as the Standard Model of fundamental particles and forces. Here is a brief summary of 15 Nobel Prize-winning discoveries closely connected to the development of that model.
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Essay:
Lynn Hecht Schafran"In August 2008 I built my summer vacation around a trip to CERN, the European high-energy physics laboratory near Geneva."
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Logbook:
Earth's Radiation BeltsJames Van Allen barely had time to savor the launch of America's first satellite, Explorer I, on January 31, 1958, when NASA scientists told him the Geiger tube cosmic-ray detector his team had built for the mission wasn't working.
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Explain it in 60 Seconds:
Charm QuarkThe charm quark is one of six quarks that, along with leptons, form the basic building blocks of ordinary matter. It is hundreds of times more massive than the up and down quarks that make up protons and neutrons.
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Scientists can feel like they are swimming in a sea of names in modern
collaborations of more than 1000 physicists, where you're just one on a
very long A-to-Z list of authors on published results. So how can individuals
be recognized for their efforts and distinguished from others when
it comes to promotion and tenure decisions? See story.
Photo-illustration: Sandbox Studio;
Photos: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab
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May 2007
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Dark Matter
Mar 2007
Dark matter is, mildly speaking, a very strange form of matter. Although it has mass, it does not interact with everyday objects and it passes straight through our bodies...
