The Muon Guys: On the Hunt for New Physics
Scientists are resurrecting an experiment that died two deaths on two continents over the course of two decades. Called Mu2e, it will look for an event so rare that, according to the Standard Model, people should never be able to build a machine sensitive enough to see it.
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Editorial:
The Enlightening Transition From Stuff to StuffParticle physics, or at least the news reports of it, often seems concerned only with the existence of various particles. However, physicists are just as interested in what happens as those particles turn into each other.
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Commentary:
Becky ParkerAn electronic chip developed at CERN inspires teenagers to design an experiment that will fly into space—and inspires their teacher to start a research network for high-school students.
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Department:
Signal to BackgroundGob-smacked by a dinobird; National Lab Day gets an island vibe; a physicist’s winning formula for predicting baseball winners; taking greenhouse-gas trapping to a new level; a very stretchy midnight snack; letters; correction.
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Department:
symmetrybreakingA summary of recent stories, published weekdays, in symmetrybreaking, www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/
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Feature:
The LHC DecodedWalk like a physicist, point by point, through three displays that highlight scientific and technical milestones from the Large Hadron Collider’s first months of operation.
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Feature:
Science Road TripIn the summer of 1928, the young Ernest O. Lawrence set out across America in a Flying Cloud coupe to begin his new life at the University of California, Berkeley. Eighty-one years later, a writer and a photographer took a road trip to visit the legacy of this accelerator-physics pioneer: American Big Science.
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Day in the Life:
Joe FrischRunning the world’s most powerful X-ray laser requires a special intensity.
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Gallery:
John ZaklikowskiOver the past several years, John Zaklikowski has spent nearly all of his savings on the circuitry and electrical components he used to create nearly a dozen works, most of them modeled on large-scale particle physics experiments.
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Accelerator Apps:
Sterilizing Medical SuppliesFor certain products, such as prepackaged syringes, the ideal sterilizing agent may be a stream of electrons from an accelerator.
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Logbook:
CERN Touch ScreenOn March 11, 1972, CERN engineer Bent Stumpe proposed a new type of interactive computer display for controlling the lab’s new Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator. It was apparently the world’s first capacitive touch screen, a technology now widely used in ticket machines and smart phones.
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Explain it in 60 Seconds:
Charged LeptonsCharged leptons are a breed of elementary particle that comes in three masses: the lightweight electron, responsible for the electricity in our homes; the middleweight muon; and the heavy tau. The Mu2e experiment hopes to catch muons turning into electron, a phenomenon known as flavor violation.
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In this artwork, Braniac, John Zaklikowski used every last
mother board, cell phone and floppy disk he had collected—and an array
of low-tech goods ranging from old-fashioned telephone
bells to a kitchen-sink strainer. He began with a rigid
plywood armature and used screws to attach hundreds
of components. A thick blue ring made of wax mixed
with pigment added coherence to the intricate result,
a juxtaposition of high and low tech. See more of his
work in the Gallery.
Photo: Bradley Plummer, SLAC
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