Over a half-eaten burrito or a bowl of spaghetti, Sam Ehrenstein ponders the unanswered questions of fundamental physics. Yet Sam is no experimental physicist or postdoc brooding over his data. Not yet, anyway.
After undergoing a buffered chemical polishing (BCP) treatment at Cornell University, the first US-processed and tested International Linear Collider superconducting cavity achieved a milestone accelerating gradient of 26 MV/m (megavolts per meter)–surpassing the first gradient goal (25 MV/m).
Clouds of electrons could block the view of new discoveries at the proposed ILC, a multi-billion-dollar particle collider. Eliminating those clouds is critical to the prspects for the machine's success.
Welcome to SLAC's End Station B, where work on the International Linear Collider (ILC) will help shape the future of particle physics–although some inhabitants don't seem to give a hoot.
Physics has demonstrated that the everyday phenomena we experience are governed by universal principles applying at time and distance scales far beyond normal human experience.
Mesons. Bosons. Pions. Muons. Asparagus. Yes, asparagus. Physicists have spare time, too, and a few of them spend it in Fermilab's Garden Club, with roots almost as old as the lab itself.