constan's blog

Editor's Note: Happy April Fool's Day!

The Large Hadron Collider, or "LHC", will come online this year. The largest and most powerful accelerator ever built, it will smash protons together at 99.999999% of the speed of light in an effort to recreate conditions similar to those that existed during the Big Bang. The scientists who will do experiments there intend to study what the Bang was like and how our universe came into existence.

Is it possible to have an irrational attachment to a piece of research equipment? I know I'm rather fond of our cyclotrons...
From the New Yorker: Cyclotron's Last Stand

Another installment of physics-related stories from around the web that will tickle your fancy.

First: I'm glad Intel is thinking about how cosmic rays cause bit errors in RAM, plus this is really cool.

Cosmic ray detector on a chip

I just returned from a two-day conference in Austin, TX. For the record, it was fifty degrees warmer there, and in a good way.

The conference was sponsored by PTEC: the Physics Teacher Education Coalition, a joint effort of the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers, and National Science Foundation. PTEC has over 100 member institutions around the U.S, and they just recently opened up membership to national laboratories, so Michael and I arranged to have NSCL join. Over 150 science educators were in attendance at the 2008 meeting.

This is a demonstration that has become an integral part of how I explain what we do here, and we used to great effect with last Saturday's visiting sixth graders. I call it the "Fragmentation Box", and most of the credit for it goes to Jon Delauter.

The content of this post is less grand than the title, but do not be disappointed. There is some import contained within.

On Friday, I was privileged to attend the lecture by Dr. Ruth Ann Sime, author of Lise Meitner: a Life in Physics. Aside from being a thoroughly pleasant person, Dr. Sime enlightened us with her research into the life of a woman who was instrumental in the discovery of fission and yet received no credit. Due to her gender and Jewish ancestry, her research in Germany was glossed over and her collaborator, Otto Hahn, received the Nobel.

Don't miss James Bond's fight to determine the lowest-energy state of consolation in:

...his twenty-second film.

This past weekend, I traveled to Troy (a suburb of Detroit) to speak at a science fiction convention. ConFusion, as it is called, draws authors, artists, and musicians to present their work and views to a crowd of enthusiasts. What makes this "con" unusual is the parallel track of scientific talks. Guest scientists are treated with the same respect and excitement as other "celebrities" at the con, and I can report that their sessions are well-attended too.