Feature: BaBar and the Very Tiny Particle
In which the 500 members of the BaBar experiment buy enough time for one last adventure: capturing the bottom-most bottomonium.
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Editorial:
Starting up the Large Hadron ColliderThe Large Hadron Collider successfully circulated beams for the first time in September. That wonderful achievement moves the LHC toward first collisions and physics results, but other labs are still working hard in friendly competition.
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Commentary:
Kate McAlpine"I think rap is a good way to communicate. Rhyme has always helped embed words in my mind; hopefully science rap can help cement ideas in the minds of students and other interested people."
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Departments:
Signal to BackgroundGiving a hoot about restoration; open access to galaxies; ask a Nobel laureate; a collider inspires comic artists; Google commemorates the LHC first beam; eclipse chaser; letters.
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Feature:
The Dark Universe DebateWho will be the first to prove the existence of dark matter and dark energy? A particle physicist and an astrophysicist go head to head.
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Feature:
Where Old Physics Stuff Goes to LiveThe Fermilab boneyard is no burial ground; it’s a place where unwanted parts find new homes and lives. They’re matched with scientists who can put them to good use, donated to local schools and parks, or sold for recycling.
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Feature:
Q&A With eta sub bsymmetry’s Calla Cofield scores an exclusive interview with the particle…the ground state…the artist eta sub b, who recently emerged into the public spotlight after 30 years in hiding.
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Essay:
Robin Hanson"Today’s LHC forecasts are no easier to score than the typical horoscope."
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Logbook:
LHC StartupOn September 10, 2008, scientists at the European laboratory CERN attempted for the first time to send a beam of particles around a new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider.
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Explain it in 60 Seconds:
Magnet QuenchA magnet quench is a dramatic yet fairly routine event within a particle accelerator. In the case of a large superconducting magnet, such a quench generates as much force as an exploding stick of dynamite.
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In the last few months of the BaBar experiment at SLAC
National Accelerator Laboratory, scientists pulled one
last trick out of their bag and produced a new particle—
the bottom-most bottomonium. In doing so, the 500-member
collaboration proved as agile as its cartoon namesake.
Photo: Bradley Plummer, SLAC
Cosmic Microwave Background
Oct/Nov 2006
John Mather and George Smoot shared the 2006 Nobel Prize for experiments on board of the COBE satellite. It took Mather’s experiment only nine minutes to record enough data to confirm the big-bang theory...
Dark Energy
Aug 2007
Dark energy is the weirdest and most abundant stuff in the universe. It is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up, and the destiny of our universe rests in its hands...
