A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication
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Logbook of December 2009
12/01/09

The shortest report

On April 28, 1947 Stanford Linear Electron Accelerator Project Report No. 7 announced the realization of a dream 15 years in the making: the linear acceleration of electrons.

12/01/09

Livingston plot

Could someone please explain to me the vertical scale on the Livingston plot on page 30 of the October 2009 issue?

12/01/09

Was that a quake? Ask the Tevatron

Long after the hard shaking stops, an earthquake's seismic waves reverberate around the world, imperceptibly rocking the ground. As one seismologist puts it, a great earthquake causes every grain of sand on Earth to dance.

12/01/09

Tunnel tunes rouse ice cream memories

Some of Fermilab's mechanical technicians spend a lot of time underground. In the echoing tunnels of the Tevatron collider they fix things, crawling behind equipment to replace aging nuts and bolts and repair everything from vacuum pumps to multi-ton superconducting magnets.

12/01/09

The invisibles come to Paris

How do you make the invisible visible? Astrophysicists face this challenge daily. Unlike astronomers who view stars through telescopes, astrophysicists study cosmic particles that are too small or dark to see directly.

12/01/09

Wiping with the stars

Every so often, particle physics communicators from labs around the world gather to swap strategies for getting people interested in science. At the group's April meeting in Japan, the big hit was toilet paper.

12/01/09

Scintillators

Scintillators are transparent materials that allow scientists to detect particles and other forms of radiation.

12/01/09

Fermilab rap

For a growing number of so-called Nerdcore rappers, the message is that people need to support basic research and math and science education if they want to hand future generations a nation worth bragging about.

12/01/09

Hypermusic prologue

What opera and physics may have in common, more than anything else, is their tendency to make most people cringe or fall asleep. Can an avant-garde opera that compares self-exploration to the physics of multiple dimensions invigorate audiences?

12/01/09

Recycle, reuse, re-accelerate

Chugging along in the background, old physics machines are the workhorses behind many cutting-edge projects, from the world's most powerful X-ray laser to the Large Hadron Collider and a lab that tests microchips bound for Mars.