Citation numbers and the Impact Factor of journals are often used to evaluate the quality and the importance of research. Both quantities have some shortcomings, and people using these indicators should know when and when not to use them.
In high-energy collisions, luminosity, or beam brightness, isn't the only thing to consider; low background noise at the detectors is also important. When wayward particles bounce around inside detectors, they can mimic real collisions, muddy results, and even damage parts of the collider.
Last October, the front of the SLAC computing center looked like an elaborate children's war game in progress. Ad hoc piles of polystyrene, plastic, wooden pallets, and cardboard created an image of bunkers and trenches in a plastic post-industrial landscape.
Hosting the "Late Show with Leon," Nobel laureate Leon Lederman shared with high school students his top fourteen ways to know you have won the Nobel Prize:
After the discovery of a new elementary particle 10 years ago by Fermilab's CDF and DZero detector collaborations, a group from DZero threw a party. Between bottles of bubbly celebrating the top quark's detection, a contest of brains was in full-swing.
Nature provides three kinds of neutrinos. In the last ten years, physicists have gathered increasingly strong evidence for neutrino oscillations, the transformation of one kind of neutrino into another one.
Few periods in history were shaped by science as much as the 1950s. The Cold War was in full swing. The space race was finishing its first lap with Sputnik's launch. The Manhattan Project remained fresh in everyone's minds.
