CERN Courier: January/February 2000
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The electron century
In 1900 nobody could have even dreamed of the way in which science would evolve over the 100 years that followed. Theorist and science writer Frank Close reviews the past century and looks forward to the next.
Caught in the QuarkNet
Large international collaborations formed around experiments at CERN's future LHC collider include outreach and education as part of their mission. Among the recipients of LHC data will be eager high school students.
Lessons learnt from the heavy tau lepton
A quarter of a century ago, Martin Perl discovered a new particle: the tau lepton. This weakly interacting particle is so heavy that it can decay into strongly interacting particles and provide very special physics conditions. It is described here by long-time tau specialist Antonio Pich.
Physics in a cold climate
This brief excerpt from the foreword of a new book of lectures in theoretical physics by Misha Shifman gives a penetrating insight into the traditions of Russian physics and the life of a theoretical physicist under the Soviet regime.
Deciphering the enigma of elastic scattering
Understanding most of what happens in high-energy particle scattering should be easy, but it isn't. A recent international conference underlined a traditional dilemma.