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02/01/08

Jennifer Ouellette: The Big Bang Theory

One of my favorite scenes in The Big Bang Theory involves the two main characters, Leonard and Sheldon, trying to move a large, flat box up two flights of stairs. Faced with no equipment and little upper-body strength, Leonard declares, “We are physicists!

02/01/08

Physicists rock

Wherever physics goes, music follows, from the lyrical strains of flute and violin to Blue Wine, Les Horribles Cernettes and Drug Sniffing Dogs.

02/01/08

From eye to sight

Seeing is easy. We open our eyes, and there the world is–in starlight or sunlight, still or in motion, as far as the Pleiades or as close as the tips of our noses.

02/01/08

Short cuts for newcomers at the LHC

When Sal Rappoccio, a postdoctoral researcher from Johns Hopkins University, joined the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment in mid-2007, he did what any newcomer would do. He tried to start his analysis. It did not go well.

02/01/08

Krystle Williams: Putting a new face on physics

What will the physics community look like 10 years from now? What should it look like? With the adoption of the theme “Future Faces of Physics,” these are the questions the Society of Physics Students (SPS) is encouraging you to ask yourself.

02/01/08

Symmetry's web expansion

With 30 issues behind us, this issue of symmetry launches the next phase of the magazine's development. Our readers now use the magazine in different ways, and we are reaching a much larger audience.

Logbook of December 2007
12/01/07

CMS cosmic challenge

In August 2006, scientists working on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN conducted a Cosmic Challenge to test components of their 12,500-ton CMS particle detector.

12/01/07

New directions, new directors

Two labs on the brink of launching major projects have one more thing in common: new directors named in December.

12/01/07

Penguins and particles

‘Tis the season for science at the bottom of the Earth. Researchers are flying to the South Pole from all over the globe to take advantage of the “ warm” summer months, when temperatures average minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

12/01/07

The LHC by mail

Each year the European laboratory CERN welcomes tens of thousands of visitors. Now the lab can visit them back.

12/01/07

Connecting with Africa

ATLAS, a particle physics experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, boasts 2000-plus members from 35 countries. But on a map showing where those members come from, one continent is almost mark-free: Africa.

12/01/07

Spartan software

Every time Fermilab scientist Tom Schwarz starts up SpartyJet, he inwardly grimaces. The computer program works well. It does a fine job of finding and recording jets—sprays of subatomic particles that emerge from collisions involving protons.

12/01/07

Life among the physics tribes

Meeting in CERN’s Restaurant 1, anthropologist Arpita Roy of the University of California, Berkeley is quick to declare that she will not be having any more coffee today. She has begun drinking multiple cups per day as she meets with CERN physicists to learn about their work.

12/01/07

Computers take on more than aliens

They started out scanning the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence with SETI@ home. They’ve plotted chess moves, battled malaria, and folded proteins, all from their home computers. Now, volunteers are tackling particle physics with LHC@home.