symmetry - Dimensions of Particle Physics
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March 2009 Issue Cover
March 2009 Issue Cover

On the cover:
This issue of symmetry marks a first: two different covers, each celebrating a team of experimenters at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. The CDF and DZero collaborations alternate in writing the Result of the Week column for Fermilab Today. Half the copies of the issue portray members of the CDF experiment climbing Fermilab’s Wilson Hall, transformed into a giant H in honor of the Higgs boson. The other half feature DZero collaborators atop their detector, reaching for the Higgs.
Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

March 2009:
Click here to view the pdf of this issue.
Contents
Editorial: The Increments of Science
Particle physics rarely makes headline news but that doesn’t mean it isn’t continually making progress. It progresses through a series of incremental advances, with the occasional breakthrough that changes the way scientists think.
Commentary: Jessica Reed
"Democratic government is founded on scientific ideals, and any institution founded on scientific ideals requires stewards."
Signal to Background
Café swaps plastics for potatoes; cosmic lawn art; that safety sign is a joke; physicist joins canine collaboration; wiring with attitude; cosmic mud-sniffer boggles security.
symmetry breaking
A summary of recent stories, published weekdays, in symmetry breaking, www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/
Result of the Week
Behind every big breakthrough is a series of small steps that build on each other to enhance our understanding of the universe. At Fermilab’s Tevatron collider, physicists have been telling the unfolding story of their experiments in weekly installments for more than five years.
Probing the Heart of the Atom
The familiar elements of the Periodic Table come in a number of forms, or isotopes, some found only fleetingly in the most violent events, such as exploding stars. By creating those rare isotopes in the lab, physicists are learning how the atomic nucleus works and deciphering the natural history of the elements.
Cosmic Weather Gauges
Particle physics joins forces with other fields to look at two important factors shaping weather: temperatures high in the atmosphere and the dampness of the dirt beneath our feet.
Gallery: Jorge Cham
Cham’s popular comic strip about the lives of hapless grad students takes him to the Large Hadron Collider. Cham drew a series of comics that explains the science with remarkable clarity.
Essay: Brian Malow
"Other comedians just have to be funny. They don’t have to strive for scientific and mathematical accuracy. I do, or the audience will dissect me."
Logbook: Violating Parity
This doodle pad was used by Columbia researcher Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee during twice-weekly meetings with Chen Ning (Frank) Yang in 1956. The two theoretical physicists wanted to break down a fundamental and supposedly absolute law of physics known as parity conservation.
Explain it in 60 Seconds: Neutralino
Dark matter accounts for about 83 percent of all matter in the universe. Whereas matter on Earth and in stars is made of atoms and nuclei, scientists know that dark matter must be made of something else. Neutralinos are a prime candidate.
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symmetry Breaking

From early particle accelerators to the LHC in 12 minutes
July 28, 2010
Check out a 12-minute public television program that traces the invention of the cyclotron in Berkeley in the 1930s, the development of SLAC's two-mile-long linear accelerator in the 60s, and how they relate to what's going on at the Large Hadron Collider.
Lighting up the dark universe
July 28, 2010
Exploring our dark universe is usually the domain of extreme physics. Clues to dark matter and energy are searched for by huge neutrino telescopes and particle detectors, deep underground, and by experiments launched into space. But an experiment doesn't have to be exotic to explore the unexplained. At the International Conference on High Energy Physics, which ends today in Paris, scientists from the GammeV-CHASE experiment unveiled the first results from their experiment, which used 30 hours' worth of data from a 10-meter-long experiment to place the world's best limits on particles of dark energy.
LHC results: Not just the same old thing
July 26, 2010
CERN's press release issued today states that the LHC's first measurements are allowing them to “rediscover” the Standard Model of particle physics. But the presentations at ICHEP tell a slightly different story.
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On the Cover
Issue Cover Issue Cover

This issue of symmetry marks a first: two different covers, each celebrating a team of experimenters at Fermilab’s Tevatron collider. The CDF and DZero collaborations alternate in writing the Result of the Week column for Fermilab Today. Half the copies of the issue portray members of the CDF experiment climbing Fermilab's Wilson Hall, transformed into a giant H in honor of the Higgs boson. The other half feature DZero collaborators atop their detector, reaching for the Higgs.
Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

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Logbook Archive
Photo - Logbook: Archive

Z Boson

Aug 2008
In May 1983, physicists working on the UA1 detector for the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator at CERN made the first definitive observations of the Z boson...

View Logbook Archive

Explain it in 60 Seconds Archive
Photo - Explain it in 60 Seconds: Archive

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...

View 60 Seconds Archive