Men who Made the World Wonder Astronomy Magazine
Updated: 2011-10-29 08:55:43
The question of whether the OPERA experiment's faster-than-light neutrino measurement is correct is still up in the air, despite what some headlines have suggested. Experimentalists have not been able to establish how the experiment is flawed, and yet theorists have not been able to determine how its conclusion could be true.
Following the guest post from Tom Banks on challenges to eternal inflation, we’re happy to post a follow-up to this discussion by Don Page. Don was a graduate student of Stephen Hawking’s, and is now a professor at the University of Alberta. We have even collaborated in the past, but don’t hold that against him. [...]
A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved.
Tiny particles are making a big difference in the world of cancer therapy. And SLAC physicists—experts in particle transport—are using computer simulations to make those therapies safer.
In 1946, founding Fermilab director Robert Wilson was one of the first to tout the benefits of proton therapy. The cancer treatment has since been lauded as a way to minimize damage to healthy tissue while focusing a finely calibrated beam directly on the tumor – an impossibility for radiation treatments based on X-rays or gamma rays. Yet protons were not used within a hospital facility until 1990 with Fermilab’s construction of a particle accelerator at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Since then, the industry has grown and the technology has evolved. Worldwide, 37 centers use proton therapy and more than 73,000 patients have been treated.
This month marks the 50th issue of symmetry magazine, which published its first issue in Oct/Nov 2004. It quickly established its own quirky style with a cover of a little girl in jammies dragging an Einstein bear.
The 1970s were a thriving time in the world of physics, heralding such milestones as the development of the Standard Model and the discovery of the bottom quark. Now scientists at Fermilab are bringing some experimental pieces of that era back – bubble chambers and fixed-target physics. Peter Cooper, a Fermilab physicist, is heading a new experiment calibrating the classic bubble chamber technology, which is used today to search for dark matter.
William Atwood, a leading member of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope collaboration, will receive the 2012 W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics from the American Physical Society for his work as co-designer of the Large Area Telescope, the main instrument on Fermi, and for using the LAT to investigate the universe in gamma rays.
G299.2-2.9 is an intriguing supernova remnant found about 16,000 light years away in the Milky Way galaxy.