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What’s a Nice Field Like Particle
Physics Doing in a Universe Like This?
 By Judy Jackson
The quarks. The leptons. The bosons, the mesons, the hadrons, the
so-forth-and-so-ons.
Particle physicists spent the 20th century
discovering, in incredible depth and with amazing precision, the
particles that make up the world and the forces that determine how it
works.
Then they went and changed the Universe.
See whole story... |
New Speed Limit on Magnetic Switching
By Davide Castelvecchi
The speed of magnetic recording—a crucial factor in a computer’s power
and multimedia capabilities—depends on how fast one can switch a
magnet’s poles. Using SLAC’s linear accelerator, or linac, a team led by
Hans Christof Siegmann (ESRD) and Joachim Stöhr (SSRL) found the
ultimate speed of magnetic switching is at least 1,000 times slower than
previously expected. The collaboration included Ioan Tudosa and
Christian Stamm (both ESRD), Frank King (PE), Alexander Kashuba (Landau
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Moscow) and researchers from Seagate
Technology, the world’s largest manufacturer of hard drives.
See whole story... |
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Researchers at SSRL Map New Antibiotic Target
By Kate Metropolis
Addressing one of the world’s pressing health problems, scientists
working at SSRL have now obtained detailed information about an enzyme
that plays a key role in bacterial self-defense.
After the penicillin family of antibiotics
was discovered and developed in the 1940’s, illness and deaths from
infectious disease declined dramatically.
See whole story...
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PEP-II’s Luminous Life
By Mason Inman
Just as proud parents mark their children’s height on the kitchen wall,
SLAC staff marked a major achievement in the life of PEP-II on April 12.
“We’ve delivered a total of 200 inverse femtobarns to the BABAR
detector since the start of the project,” said Michael Sullivan (AD).
An inverse femtobarn is a measure of the number of particle collisions
in a period of time.
See whole story...
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A Bird in the Nesting Box is Worth Two
in the Bush
 By Mason Inman
SLAC’s trees are about to bear strange fruit. Hanging nesting boxes to
house bluebirds will soon be installed around the site. Bluebirds like
to set up housekeeping in tree cavities but their numbers have been
declining in recent years due to a lack of suitable trees.
See whole story... |
Project M Reports Now On-Line
By Jean Deken
The Stanford University Physics Department ‘Project M’ reports dating
from 1956 to 1962, including those produced by the Microwave Lab and the
then-named High-Energy Physics Lab (HEPL), are now available on-line.
Called Project M from 1956-1960, the collaboration was renamed ‘The
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center’ in 1960. The ‘M’ in the project name
was for ‘Multi-Gev’ or ‘Monster.’See whole story...
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