Signal to Background

signal to background

Giving 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.

Home sweet barn Barn owls stand about a high-quality habitat and the Lifted out of a travel carrier, foot tall. Pepper-like black spots abundance of open grassland,” the owl screeched and bit its and brown freckles dust their Thompson says. “It is one of handler’s leather glove. tan bodies, and white down cov- the longest contiguous pieces The bird was returning to ers their flat, round faces. Their of grassland in the state. We its historic home—and helping pink beaks form sharp Vs below also chose it for Fermilab’s com- to save its species. intelligent black eyes. mitment to ecological health.” Barn owls are endangered The first owl struggled as it With much of its research in Illinois, pushed to the brink by was taken out of its carrier. It machinery in underground tun- pesticides, more tightly sealed flipped upside down and spread nels, the lab is a haven for doz- barns, and the replacement its foot-long wings, flashing its ens of wildlife species and is one of farms by shops and homes. white underside. It screamed of six National Environmental Less than one-tenth of one like a Velociraptor from the movie Research Parks located on percent of the state’s natural Jurassic Park. The second owl Department of Energy sites. prairie remains. was no happier, clacking its beak Thompson plans to release But the restoration of more in protest. more barn owls onto Fermilab than 1200 acres of prairie at One at a time, Thompson property each year; the red barn Fermi National Accelerator carried the owls up a 20-foot is big enough to house a num- Laboratory is giving Illinois its ladder to a box mounted high ber of the birds. Next time, he best shot at keeping and on the inside of the barn wall. says, they’ll wear satellite trans- breeding the owls, says county There they would stay, peering mitters so researchers can track ecologist Dan Thompson. through a screen at the world their movements. Scientists have introduced two outside, until accustomed to the Kathryn Grim year-old males, both born in sights and smells of the lab captivity, to an old red barn on grounds. the lab grounds. “We chose Fermilab for the symmetry | volume 05 issue november 08

Photos: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

4 signs offering to answer phys- ics questions. Even in a city of people too busy for impromptu sidewalk conversations, the sight was too tempting to resist. “They sat down and asked about the big bang and black holes,” Lederman says. “They were good questions. People were very curious.” Soon about 20 people formed a line down the block. They asked Lederman about the strong force, time and space, fusion, and even time travel. Some asked follow-up questions to get a clearer understanding, while others just seemed thrilled at the chance to meet a Nobel Sloan Survey shares universities, volunteers have Prize winner. starry snapshots been classifying millions of gal- Lederman said he was In the old days, astronomers axies seen in Sloan images. impressed that most people who wanted to use a powerful Making all this data public asked about physics; there telescope had to buy plane “just makes a lot of scientific were no off-the-wall questions. tickets and cross their fingers sense,” says Michael Strauss, The native New Yorker said the weather would cooperate. deputy project scientist for he’d gladly do it again. Image: Sloan Digital Sky Survey “You would apply for time,” Sloan. “There was far more sci- The idea stemmed from says Brian Yanny, a scientist ence than we could do ourselves discussions in late May at the in Fermilab’s experimental anyway.” World Science Festival in New astrophysics group, “and if you The Sloan Web site has got- York about bringing science were lucky you would get ten more than 467 million hits to the streets. Lederman and three to six nights a year.” since 2001. In 2008, it has aver- a film crew set up shop under Astronomers still use tele- aged 10 million hits per month, a few hand-drawn “Ask a Nobel scopes the old-fashioned way. 1.6 million of which are requests Prize-winning physicist” signs But today, all you need to access for data. More than half of in front of a hotel on 34th Street, a decade’s worth of images and the more than 2000 published within view of the Empire State information about the stars is an papers based on data from the building. Internet connection. Fermilab, survey were written by research- Lederman shared the 1988 which handles data for the Sloan ers not directly involved in it. Nobel Prize in Physics for his Digital Sky Survey, makes that Two other projects, the Two contributions to neutrino phys- data available through the Web Micron All Sky Survey and the ics. He is well-known for his to scientists and armchair UK Infrared Deep Sky Survey, book The God Particle and for astronomers alike. are following the Sloan model his outreach and education Sloan surveyed more than a by making all their data publicly efforts. His street-corner debut quarter of the sky using an imag- available. was filmed by ScienCentral ing camera—basically a giant “One of the things we’re in conjunction with the World digital camera attached to the proud of at SDSS is that we Science Festival, and can be back of a 2.5-meter telescope have been the inspiration for viewed in two parts on YouTube. in New Mexico. It also measured the next generation of projects,” Rhianna Wisniewski Image: YouTube the distances to the brightest Strauss says. “One of the les- symmetry | volume 05 issue november 08 one million galaxies in its field sons is: You don’t have to keep of view. your cards close to your chest.” On the survey’s Web site, Kathryn Grim www.sdss.org, you can comb through images looking for Street-corner physics undiscovered comets or new Leon Lederman, a 1988 Nobel classes of stars, or simply find a laureate and Fermilab physicist, cool background image for your plopped a folding table and computer screen. In a related two chairs on a busy New York project called Galaxy Zoo, cre- City street corner and sat ated by researchers at three under colorful hand-scrawled

5 signal to background

Linear Collider came to sell LHC controllers posted in the their own doujinshi promoting accelerator’s electronic log- the project. book a special version of the One, called The Scientist’s Google logo (see bottom Viewpoint, featured physicists’ image), which had appeared reviews of science fiction novels. on the company’s Web site “The scientists have made that day. It’s one of a series of serious explanations, not just logos Google has designed criticizing them as impossible for its search page to cele- or ridiculous things,” Fujino says. brate holidays, historic events, “I think this makes our publica- and other occasions. For more tion very attractive.” The ILC on the LHC first beam, see supporters expected to sell the logbook on the inside back about 20 copies but wound up cover of this issue. selling 150: “I am surprised to Glennda Chui see a lot of people interested in accelerator and fundamental Life’s one eclipse physics,” Fujino said. after another A second publication was On the wall outside Cherrill titled Kasokuki de Go! or Let’s Spencer’s office, a scientific go with the accelerator! It used poster describes a prototype comics, essays, and other for- for a new type of accelerator mats to analyze the personali- magnet; a card thanks her for Image courtesy of Keisuke Mori, ILC Fan Club 2008 Fan Mori, ILC Image courtesy of Keisuke Boosting a collider ties of ILC scientists, based on donating her long hair to make one comic at a time their responses to a question- a wig for an ailing girl; and Comiket—short for Comic naire. “We can feel the sense a scribbled note points to Market—is the world’s largest of closeness to the scientists a spot on a map southeast of comic convention. Held in this way,” Shino Kojima, one Novosibirsk, Russia. It reads, Tokyo, it draws more than half of the founders of the ILC fan “This is where Cherrill will a million people from all over club, says. be on 1st August, 2008 at ~17h the world to buy and sell dou- In both cases, the fans were Siberian time.” jinshi—self-published manga happy just to recover the costs Above it is a photo she shot, and graphic novels. Some of of printing their books. “The from that out-of-the-way spot, of these artists and writers have deadline for the next Comiket a total solar eclipse. become so famous that people is this coming Wednesday, and It’s one of dozens Spencer wait in line for three hours to we are going to prepare the has taken since 1983, when her buy their work. application,” Fujino says. “We will first eclipse, on the island of Getting a ticket to exhibit be here on December 30th if Java in Indonesia, gave her at Comiket isn’t easy, either; we can get the tickets again.” a new focus for planning vaca- sometimes there are six appli- Rika Takahashi tions. Eclipse-chasing has cants for every slot. taken her to Hawaii, Zambia, “I was pretty surprised to get A special recognition Australia, and Libya. She saw a table,” says Masao Fujino, a On Sept. 10, scientists at the the sun wink out from a ship on student at the University of European laboratory CERN the Caribbean and waited in Tokyo Graduate School for Law sent the first beam of protons an English drizzle for the clouds and Politics. He and other fans around the Large Hadron to part—which they finally did, of the proposed International Collider. Forty-six minutes later, for 10 seconds. Image courtesy of the LHC Remote Operations Center at Fermilab symmetry | volume 05 issue november 08

6 “I like to travel,” she says, “and It’s no surprise, then, to hear dimmed, casting an eerie twi- it was an excuse to go to all that she started taking her light over the land, “The animals these places. I choose my total daughter to eclipses at the age thought it was time to go to bed. eclipses based on where they of three. Sierra is now 14, The baboons started chatter- are, and whether I’d like to Spencer says, and “probably ing. They sleep in trees, and they visit that place, and whether holds some sort of record for started arguing about who I’ve been there before.” how young she is and how many gets to sleep where.” As the magnet engineer for total eclipses she’s seen.” Spencer is already planning SLAC National Accelerator The experience is incredi- her next eclipse in July 2009, Photos courtesy of Cherrill Spencer Laboratory, Spencer designs ble, she says, and not just for which she’ll watch with 1600 magnets and follows them the eclipse itself. other people from a cruise ship through construction and mea- In Zambia, her group camped near Iwo Jima. surement. She also puts in along the Zambezi River and With six minutes and 39 sec- many hours as a volunteer for drove three hours at about 10 onds of totality, she says, “This programs that encourage mph—“along the worst road is going to be the longest one in girls and women to take up in the world,” she adds—to our remaining lifetimes.” scientific careers. a national park. When the sun Glennda Chui symmetry | volume 05 issue november 08 letters

More physics license plates

I did not respond in time for the license plate issue, but I do have a good one from an old photo taken while on leave at Caltech in the ’70s. The car (right) belonged to Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel Laureate in Physics. I don't know if he still has it. Gene Sprouse, American Physical Society

I liked the plates shown in the current issue, but I think my Virginia plate is more original—FYZYKZ! Greg Hood, Tidewater Community College, Virginia Beach, VA

I liked your cover showing physics-related license plates. The Maryland plates that I have had for several decades say QUARK. They have initiated many interesting conversations about science, literature, and cheese. Bruce Barnett, Johns Hopkins University

I got this plate when I moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory to work in the theory division. I chose a plate with the gauge group SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1), the mathematical structure that underlies the theory of particle physics. A passerby once asked me if I was a law- yer; he had interpreted the plate as “Sue three, sue two, you won.” Scott Willenbrock, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

To view more physics-related license plates and to submit your own photos and stories, please go to www.symmetrymagazine.org/licenseplates/

7