The Large Hadron Collider is currently being installed in a 27-kilometer ring buried deep below the countryside on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland. When its operation begins in 2007, the LHC will be the worlds most powerful particle accelerator.
In less than three years, scientists will start up the world's largest scientific instrument: The Large Hadron Collider. US scientists have built key components for the machine and its experiments, paving the way for their participation in a decade of discoveries.
In honor of the World Year of Physics, symmetry featured an Albert Einstein teddy bear on the cover of the February issue. Since then, we have received a steady stream of phone calls and email.
The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, and the new CMS offices at Fermilab are separated only by the amount of time it takes light to travel between the two places.
Do you know why Louis Victor de Broglie won a Nobel Prize in 1929? Or why a Nobel Prize wasn't given out in 1934? What about Nils Gustaf Dalen's invention of an automatic sun valve beating out Max Planck and Albert Einstein for the Nobel Prize in 1912?
Custom designed microchips have become essential in processing signals from modern physics experiments that generate lots of data. This chip, the QIE9, designed by Fermilab engineers, is just one example of the many Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) used in such experiments.