People and things
enormous progress achieved in re periment using this technique has On people cent years in understanding and contributed new limits on neutrino- developing calorimetric techniques. less double beta decay (see page The large number of ongoing 14), in this case tellurium-130 go William Happer, formerly at Prince projects and the encouraging pro ing to xenon-130. The experiment, ton, has become Director of the Of gress in this field, mainly under the by a Milan team (University and fice of Energy Research in the US pressure to define the experimental INFN) led by Ettore Fiorini, began in Department of Energy, the govern programme at the LHC and the August in the Italian Gran Sasso ment department funding most of SSC, led to the decision to contin underground Laboratory. the US particle physics pro ue the series of Conferences on an The detector/source is a 35 gramme. He takes over from Depu annual basis (the first meeting was gram crystal of tellurium oxide ty Director James F. Decker, who held last year at Fermilab). Applica operating at about 20 millikelvin in had been Acting Director. Dr. Hap tions are open to host the future a dilution refrigerator specially per also becomes Science and meetings. made with previously tested low Technology Adviser to Energy Se The Capri meeting was organ radioactivity materials. cretary James D. Watkins. ized by A.Ereditato (Napoli), P.Jen- No sign of neutrinoless double Emilio Picasso of CERN receives ni (CERN), V.Palladino (Napoli) and beta decay has been found with a one of this year's prestigious Ital- A.Para (Fermilab) with the support lower limit for the half life of more gas Prizes for Research and Innova 20 of the Italian INFN and University of than 3 x 10 years after only 500 tion awarded to European Commu Napoli. Some 120 participants at hours of effective running time, ex nity scientists. As Director of tended. tending the previous limit by al CERN's 2 7-kilometre LEP ring con most two orders of magnitude. struction project, his work was of 'historical importance', the citation reads. Thermal detectors: Italy's President Francesco Cossiga visited CERN on 25 October. At the Delphi under Robert Cahn becomes Director of Initial results ground experimental area at LEP were (left the Physics Division at the La to right) Delphi spokesman Ugo Amaldi, CERN Council President Sir William Mitchell, wrence Berkeley Laboratory, ena President Cossiga, and CERN Director Gen bling Piermaria Oddone to act full Thermal detectors are widely re eral Carlo Rubbia. garded as being likely to contribute time as the Laboratory's Deputy Di to new precision physics, and (Photo CERN HI 43.10.91/13) rector. many groups in Europe, USA and Japan are presently developing ex amples such as superheated super conducting grains, superconducting tunnel junctions and bolometers (September 1988, page 23). Especially popular is the latter, using as detector a pure diamag- netic and dielectric crystal. Its heat capacity at low temperature (pro portional to the cube of the ratio between operating and Debye tem peratures) can become so small that even the tiny amount of ener gy left by a particle causes a rise of temperature measurable by a suita ble thermistor. The technical development of these detectors has been impres sive over the last years and an ex
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