Woman takes over as head of ATLAS

Next month Fabiola Gianotti takes over as head of ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland, the first woman to hold such a position. The ATLAS collaboration consists of almost 3,000 physicists from 169 institutions, 37 countries and five continents. ATLAS is the biggest detector ever built at a particle collider.  

Last year the CERN published this interview with her:

Source: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/112317

A Fourth Culture: Why Science Needs Art

In this intriguing article, Jonah Lehrer (pictured - a neuroscientist author, and blogger at The Frontal Cortex) calls for a Fourth Culture, whereby engaging with art becomes part of the scientific method:

"It’s also crucial to take our scientific metaphors beyond the realm of the metaphorical, so we can better understand the consequences of our theories. Art galleries should be filled with disorienting evocations of string theory and the EPR paradox. Every theoretical physics department should support an artist-in-residence. [...]

The premise of this movement — perhaps a fourth culture — is that neither culture can exist by itself."

Source: http://seedmagazine.com

Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace, a 19th century British writer who is considered the world's first computer programmer, will be honored by bloggers all over the world on 24 March - Ada Lovelace Day. More than 1500 bloggers participating in the first annual Ada Lovelace Day have pledged to write about a woman or women they admire working in technology on March 24th.

Particle Decelerator has chosen to highlight the work of Marta Peirano. Not only is she one of Spain's most respected journalists and bloggers on technology and culture, but Marta is also a historian of technology, having recently published a book on automatons. 

She is currently working on a biography of Ada Lovelace.

Visit: http://lapetiteclaudine.com/

Semi-living entities

A small window on how journalism sees the coalface of the art-science debate, featuring an analysis of the the work of Tissue Culture & Art Project by the curator of the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition at MoMA.

Source: http://seedmagazine.com

Fermilab "closes in on the Higgs boson"

Hands up who agrees that Fermilab have the best press office in science right now?

After a three week blitz of results ranging from the discovery of a single top quark, progress regarding the probable mass of the Higgs boson, and the discovery of a mystery particle, Fermilab today released a tantalising hint that the next set of results out of the Tevatron particle accelerator might just reveal a sighting of the elusive Higgs boson. 

Are they just taunting the LHC, or have they really got something?  In all liklihood much will be revealed this Summer at the International Symposium on Lepton Photon Interactions at High Energies (Lepton Photon 09) in Hamburg, Germany, from 17-22 August 2009.  Stay tuned.

Source: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/index.html

Inherent Vice - new Thomas Pynchon novel

We here at Particle Decelerator were most excited to hear about an unexpected new book my one of our favourite authors. A new Thomas Pynchon Novel, Inherent Vice, is being released in August 2009. Apparently a detective novel set in the 60s, the new book is 416 pages long and is described in the Penguin catalogue as "part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon".

The image here is the cover art by Hawaiian artist, Darshan Zenith

Source: http://www.hyperarts.com/thomas-pynchon/inherent-vice.html

Fun & Games at the LHC

As the Tevatron close in on the Higgs boson, the LHC are making games.

SuperBob, MicroBoy and other characters show us CERN's antimatter factory, what happens in the theory department and how much of the real work gets done in the cafeteria, in this new game for children celebrating 20 years of the Web.

Dodge monsters, answer questions about accelerating particles & fly through space collecting the electrons, protons and neutrons.

Source: http://info.web.cern.ch/

Telharmonium Memories

Before the radio, there was the Telharmonium, designed to broadcast music across the telephone wires. Here's a great link to one of our favourite archaic oddities, from our friends at Odd Instrument.

Source: http://oddstrument.com/2009/03/11/telharmonium/

Particle Oddball Surprises Physicists

Scientists at Fermilab announced that they have found evidence of an unexpected particle whose curious characteristics may reveal new ways that quarks can combine to form matter. The physicists have called the particle Y(4140), and  it appears to flout nature’s known rules for fitting quarks and antiquarks together.

"It must be trying to tell us something,” said CDF cospokesperson Jacobo Konigsberg. 

“So far, we’re not sure what that is, but rest assured we’ll keep on listening.”

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318140618.htm & http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.2229

Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers

A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now aiming their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.

In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds, a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.
The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito Destruction.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123680870885500701.html