Praxis Archives – Page 130 of 183

LBNL celebrates its 75th anniversary with style

Festivity met science when the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) celebrated its 75th anniversary with a Founders Day party on 26 August. The day capped a summer of celebratory events, including historical lectures, speeches, music, fire-spinning, Scottish dance, films, science demonstrations, tours, birthday cake for 600 and a time capsule to be opened in 2031. There was even a display of vintage cars, including one driven by the lab’s founder and inventor of the cyclotron, Ernest Orlando Lawrence.

CCElbn1_11-06 — The 184 inch cyclotron was the first machine with a building designed around it. The building is a designated historical landmark, and now houses a 1.5 GeV electron synchrotron that is used to produce synchrotron radiation. Image: LBNL.

Originally known as the Rad Lab, LBNL was founded in 1931 to house the latest of Lawrence’s increasingly large cyclotrons. His first cyclotrons were small, and could easily be accommodated in his laboratory in the physics department at the University of California Berkeley. However, by 1931 he was working on a monster 27 inch cyclotron with an 80 ton magnet. This required a separate building with reinforced flooring, and on 26 August 1931 Lawrence was given use of the former Civil Engineering Testing Laboratory. Lawrence renamed it the Radiation Laboratory, and so the Rad Lab was born.

The 27 inch cyclotron accelerated protons to 3.6 MeV. Lawrence’s next machine boasted a 37 inch diameter, and accelerated deuterons to 8 MeV and alpha particles to 16 MeV. One of its major accomplishments was the production of the first artificial element, technetium. The next iteration had a 220 ton magnet around a 60 inch cyclotron. This machine required a new, dedicated building: the Crocker Radiation Laboratory. In 1939, Louis Alvarez and Robert Cornog used the 60 inch machine to discover helium-3, and Martin Kamen found radioactive carbon-14. Carbon-14’s potential as a radioactive tag for biology studies was quickly recognized. This machine also saw the beginning of the lab’s diversification, as Lawrence’s brother, John, used it to study nuclear medicine.

The steady growth in accelerator size and energy produced a steady increase in cost. Part of Lawrence’s genius was his ability to manage physics on an industrial scale; another part was his ability to persuade both government agencies and private philanthropists to fund his work. The fundraising was especially impressive in the midst of the Great Depression. Although these challenges are well recognized today, 75 years ago large accelerator laboratories were unknown, and many of the organizational techniques that he brought to particle physics have become ubiquitous.

CCElbn2_11-06 — An aerial view of LBNL today. The 184 inch cyclotron dome is visible near the top of the built-up area; the flatter dome to its lower left housed the Bevatron, which was completed in 1955. Image: LBNL.

During the Second World War, the Rad Lab shifted focus, playing a key role in early studies of magnetic separation of uranium isotopes. However, by 1944 magnetic separation had largely moved to Oak Ridge, and the Rad Lab returned to basic physics, with the construction of a mammoth 184 inch cyclotron. By 1950, this was in use for studies of physics, nuclear chemistry and nuclear medicine. The war also produced a large turnover in personnel, as many pre-war leaders left to work on atomic weapons, radar and other military technology.

The lab’s next machine was a big step up in energy and complexity: a 6.5 GeV synchrotron, the Bevatron. Its energy could reach the threshold for antiproton production; by 1955 the accelerator was complete and antiprotons were indeed observed. Later, it supported a long series of experiments that used progressively larger bubble chambers. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, researchers used these chambers to discover a large number of meson and baryon resonances. Still later, the Bevatron was converted to accelerate heavy ions, ushering in the new field of relativistic heavy-ion collisions.

CCElbn3_11-06 — Ernest Lawrence and colleagues with the 27 inch cyclotron. Image: LBNL.

In 1959, with the death of Ernest Lawrence, Ed McMillan became the lab’s second director. The 1960s saw a period of expansion, with many new buildings and facilities, including the 88 inch cyclotron, still used for nuclear structure studies. The Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator (HILAC), and later Super-HILAC, continued the laboratory’s studies of heavy elements, producing atoms of elements 102 and 103. The lab took its first steps beyond the world of particle and nuclear physics, with initiatives in materials science (initially to study the effects of radiation on different materials), and later, chemical lasers.

Of course, the laboratory was part of the Berkeley community. By the late 1960s, the US was involved in the Vietnam War, and Berkeley was the scene of massive antiwar protests. Lab scientists were themselves divided, but most had great sympathy for the antiwar movement, and many actively demonstrated against the war. The 1960s also led to new concerns for human rights, and LBNL scientists were active in supporting oppressed scientists in the former Soviet Union.

CCElbn4_11-06 — Steve Chu, LBNL director and Nobel laureate, closing a time-capsule during Founders Day. The capsule will remain sealed until it is opened on the lab 100th anniversary in 2031. Image: LBNL.

Besides the antiwar movement, the 1960s and 1970s brought tremendous political and intellectual ferment. Energy became scarce and environmentalism appeared. In 1971, US president Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. Basic research lost some of its lustre. Under the leadership of its third director, Andrew Sessler, the lab responded to these pressures by diversifying into a variety of fields: biology, earth science and materials science.

Today, this diversity is a hallmark of LBNL. The lab has major programmes in many fields, including synchrotron radiation (the 1.5 GeV advanced light-source accelerator and a strong accelerator development programme), computing (the National Energy Research Supercomputing Center), genome sequencing and cancer biology, as well as continuing programmes in electron microscopy, energy efficiency in buildings, and nanotechnology. The lab has also developed strong electrical and mechanical engineering and computer-science groups; their contributions are apparent in the complicated instrumentation built at LBNL. Recent examples include the vertex detectors for the BaBar experiment at SLAC and CDF at Fermilab, and contributions to ATLAS at CERN; the time projection chamber for the STAR detector at Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC); the support structure for the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory; and the Gammasphere germanium detector.

CCElbn5_11 — Children learning about science on Founders Day at LBNL. The build-it-yourself electric motors proved to be very popular, while bubbles taught about the science of surface tension. Image: LBNL.

Although birthdays are good opportunities to reminisce, the lab also used Founders Day to look forward to the next 75 years. The foreseeable future looks bright. In particle physics, a strong programme in the ATLAS experiment is accompanied by a cosmology programme, which is exploring the nature of dark energy, most notably by studying distant supernovae. SNAP, an orbiting telescope with a billion-pixel camera, should launch early in the next decade. In nuclear physics, the STAR time-projection chamber continues to study heavy-ion collisions at RHIC, and LBNL is contributing to the effort to build an electromagnetic calorimeter for ALICE at CERN. Future nuclear structure studies will be built around GRETINA, a precision germanium tracking calorimeter currently under construction. Efforts in neutrino oscillation, θ₁₃, double beta decay and neutrino astronomy with IceCube complement these large programmes. Accelerator design has always been a hallmark of the lab; future designs include a low-energy, high-current light-ion accelerator for astrophysical studies and work on linear colliders. Other accelerator efforts are focused on producing ultra-short pulses of X-rays, and studies using lasers to accelerate particles. Over the next few decades, these efforts are likely to lead to radically new types of accelerators.

A key focus of current lab director Steve Chu is helping to solve the world energy crisis, through studies including hydrogen storage, carbon sequestration, solar energy (perhaps involving photosynthesis), biomass-to-fuel conversion and improved nuclear power systems. This effort will involve many of the lab’s divisions.

CCElbn6_11-06 — A pristine 1935 Dodge Brothers Coupé (87 horsepower Police Special), which is said to have been driven by Ernest Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer on their late-night beer runs. Image: LBNL.

Founders Day included activities and exhibits looking back at many of these periods. Memorabilia from Lawrence’s research, including an early cyclotron were on display, as well as clothing worn by some of the lab’s 10 Nobel prize winners. An exhibition of vintage cars included a 1935 Dodge Brothers Coupé, said to have been driven by Lawrence and Robert Oppenheimer on clandestine late-night beer runs. A cinema showed classic science-fiction greats, from Flash Gordon to Frankenstein, and modern documentaries. Dance performances included traditional Scottish dance and modern fire-spinning. For children, there were hands-on scientific activities ranging from bubble-blowing to build-your-own electric motors and extracting genes from strawberries, as well as two bouncy inflatables where they could expend their energy. Who knows where the next Lawrence will come from?

Particle physics and the press

These are exciting times for particle physics, and the world’s press are taking notice. As the Large Hadron Collider prepares to begin operations, as the International Linear Collider becomes an ever more clearly defined project, as programmes for neutrino physics and astrophysics flourish, and most of all as long-awaited discoveries reveal the secrets of the universe, our friends in the media will share the adventure. Their stories and articles, TV programmes, blogs and podcasts will inform and inspire others with the spirit of excitement that particle physicists are feeling at the start of the 21st century.

CCEpar1_10-06 — The InterAction Collaboration of particle-physics communicators met at CERN in March 2006.

The journalists who tell our story will have wildly varying backgrounds, skills and points of view. Their pieces will cover the spectrum of science journalism. They will define and describe; compare and contrast; make judgements and express opinions; and praise and criticize. Writing in language that is accessible to their readers, they will at times seem wanting in their grasp of scientific subtleties. Sometimes they will appear to lack appreciation for something that we care deeply about; occasionally they may even give more credit than we deserve.

It is accepted wisdom that the press almost always get it wrong. Actually, in our experience, ultimately they get it just about right. In the months and years ahead, the majority of journalists who tell the story of 21st-century particle physics will do an excellent job. From time to time, inevitably, they will get it wrong – at least as we see it. A true test of our character as a field is how we react to this level of media coverage.

At a time of extraordinary scientific opportunity in particle physics, we must keep our eyes on the science and enjoy the privilege of taking part in discovering how the universe works. We should equally enjoy the opportunity afforded by the media’s interest.

In the past, there have been occasions when our field has devolved into warring camps, reading each new press article with suspicion, quick to take offence at every real or imagined slight or bias. It’s time to change this model. Do we want to be seen as a fractious, contentious community beset by invidiousness, or as a unified community of committed scientists confronting a golden age of discovery? We have the choice. We can set a tone of respect and admiration for all projects and experiments that lead to discovery – or one that begrudges every word of praise for others’ work. Without fail, the media will pick up on our tone. So will our colleagues, our students, scientists in other disciplines and we ourselves. It will be part of what defines the kind of field that we are.

Competition will always exist, and this is a good thing. People care passionately about their work. Of course they want to see it recognized, and defend it if it is unfairly criticized. But we have everything to gain by maintaining perspective. There will be hundreds of stories during the years ahead. Today’s lukewarm review will be tomorrow’s encomium – and vice versa. We should take them all in our stride, because we are in this together for the long haul. We all want to discover how the universe works. It’s a big universe with room, and credit, enough for everyone.

• This article is being published simultaneously in the October issues of CERN Courier and symmetry (see
www.symmetrymag.org).
Members of InterAction, a collaboration of particle-physics communicators from laboratories around the world (www.interactions.org): Roberta Antolini, INFN Gran Sasso; Peter Barratt, PPARC; Natalie Bealing, CCLRC/RAL; Stefano Bianco, INFN Frascati; Karsten Buesser, DESY; Neil Calder, SLAC; Elizabeth Clements, ILC; Reid Edwards, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Suraiya Farukhi, Argonne National Laboratory; James Gillies, CERN; Judith Jackson, Fermilab; Marge Lynch, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Youhei Morita, KEK, ILC; Christian Mrotzek, DESY; Perrine Royole-Degieux, IN2P3, ILC; Yves Sacquin, DAPNIA CEA; Ahren Sadoff, Cornell University LEPP; Maury Tigner, Cornell University LEPP; and Barbara Warmbein, ILC.

Lepton and Photon Interactions at High Energies: Proceedings of the XXII International Symposium

edited by Richard Brenner, Carlos P de los Heros and Johan Rathsman, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812566627, £56 ($98).

The Lepton–Photon symposia are among the most popular conferences in high-energy physics, since they give in-depth snapshots of the status of the field as provided by leading experts. Inside this volume, readers will find the latest results on flavour factories, quantum chromodynamics, electroweak physics, dark-matter searches, neutrino physics and cosmology, from a phenomenological point of view. It also offers a glimpse of the immediate future through summaries on the status of the next generation of high-energy accelerators and planned facilities for astroparticle physics. The review nature of the articles makes the volume useful to students, as well as to established researchers in high-energy and astroparticle physics.

Quantum Mechanics in Phase Space: An Overview with Selected Papers

Edited by Cosmas K Zachos, David B Fairlie and Thomas L Curtright, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812383840, £64 ($86).

Wigner’s quasi-probability distribution function in phase space is a special (Weyl) representation of the density matrix. It has been useful in describing quantum transport in quantum optics; nuclear physics; decoherence, quantum computing and quantum chaos. It is also important in signal processing and the mathematics of algebraic deformation. A remarkable aspect of its internal logic, pioneered by Groenewold and Moyal, has emerged in the last quarter-century, furnishing a third, alternative, formulation of quantum mechanics, independent of the conventional Hilbert space or path integral formulations. This book is a collection of the seminal papers on this formulation, with an introductory overview, an extensive bibliography, and simple illustrations, suitable for application to a broad range of physics problems.

Classical and Dissipative Quantum Systems

by Mohsen Razavy, Imperial College Press. Hardback ISBN 1860945252, £51 ($84). Paperback ISBN 1860945309, £29 ($48).

The aim of this book is to elucidate the origin and nature of dissipative forces and to present a detailed account of attempts to study dissipative phenomena in both classical mechanics and quantum theory. It begins with an introductory review of phenomenological damping forces, and the construction of the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian for the damped motion, and moves on to investigate the use of the classical formulation in the quantization of dynamical systems, and finally the problem of dissipation in interacting quantum mechanical systems. A number of important applications, such as the theory of heavy-ion scattering and the motion of a radiating electron, are also discussed.

Statistical Mechanics: Entropy, Order Parameters, and Complexity

by James P Sethna, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 019856676X, £49.95 ($99.50). Paperback ISBN 0198566778, £24.95 ($44.50).

In each generation, scientists must redefine their fields: abstracting, simplifying and distilling the previous standard topics to make room for new advances and methods. This book takes this step for statistical mechanics – a field rooted in physics and chemistry whose ideas and methods are now central to information theory, complexity and modern biology. Aimed at advanced undergraduates and early graduate students in all of these fields, Sethna limits his main presentation to the topics that future mathematicians and biologists, as well as physicists and chemists, will find fascinating and central to their work. The large supply of carefully crafted exercises, each an introduction to a whole field of study, covers everything from chaos through information theory to life at the end of the universe.

Representing Electrons: A Biographical Approach to Theoretical Entities

by Theodore Arabatzis, The University of Chicago Press. Hardback ISBN 0226024202, £44.50 ($70). Paperback ISBN 0226024210, £18 ($28).

Both a history and a metahistory, this book focuses on the development of various theoretical representations of electrons from the late 1890s until 1925, and the methodological problems associated with writing about unobservable scientific entities. Here, the electron – or rather its representation – is used as a historical actor in a novel biographical approach. Arabatzis illustrates the emergence and gradual consolidation of its representation in
physics, its career throughout old quantum theory, and its appropriation and reinterpretation by chemists. Furthermore, he argues that the considerable variance in the representation of the electron does not undermine its stable identity or existence. The book should appeal to historians, philosophers of science and scientists alike.

Particle Physics and Cosmology: The Quest for Physics Beyond the Standard Model(s) (TASI 2002)

edited by Howard E Haber and Ann E Nelson, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9812388923, £105 ($172).

This book features three lecture-series courses given at the School of the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute (TASI) on Elementary Particle Physics in 2002. The phenomenology lectures cover a broad spectrum of the research techniques used to interpret present day and future collider data. The TeV-scale physics lectures focus on modern speculations about physics beyond the Standard Model, with an emphasis on supersymmetry and extra-dimensional theories. The series on astroparticle physics looks at recent developments in theories of dark matter and dark energy, the cosmic microwave background, and prospects for the upcoming era of gravitational wave astronomy. Researchers and graduate students in high-energy physics, mathematical physics and astrophysics will find topics of interest.

Philosophy of Science: A New Perspective

by Afsar Abbas, Indian Institute of Advanced Study. Hardback ISBN 8179860604, Rs150.

This “new perspective” discusses the philosophical issues inherent within the research pursued by scientists at the forefront today. Examples from modern science, in particular the current hot topics in physics, have been provided to clarify the issues under discussion. The book is written so as to be accessible even to non-experts, but experts will find much that is new in the philosophy of science presented here. Detailed treatment of mathematics and space, along with time and matter, have also been provided.

European particle physics gets ready for the future

European Strategy for particle physics — The European strategy for particle physics, adopted by CERN Council, outlines actions for the coming decade.

In June 2005, the president of the CERN Council, Enzo Iarocci, proposed that an ad hoc scientific advisory group be established to produce a draft European strategy for particle physics. The Strategy Group was charged to meet at a one-week workshop during the first week of May at Zeuthen, near Berlin, to work out the draft strategy. Council met in Lisbon on 14 July 2006, discussed this draft, and adopted the European strategy for particle physics.

The Strategy Group brought together a broad competence. It had one member nominated by each of the CERN member states and the directors of the major European particle physics laboratories. In addition, there were eight members from the CERN Scientific Policy Committee and the European Committee for Future Accelerators, who, together with the scientific secretary and the co-chairs, made up the Preparatory Group charged with the work needed to bring the meeting in Berlin to a successful conclusion.

For the Strategy Group meeting seven representatives were also invited from the CERN observer states, and from the Astroparticle Physics European Coordination (ApPEC) Committee, the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC) and the Funding Agencies for the Linear Collider (FALC).

The process towards the European strategy for particle physics had four essential elements: the Strategy Group Web page, an open symposium held in Orsay from 29 January – 1 February, a Briefing Book containing the information needed to develop the strategy, and the Zeuthen meeting of the Strategy Group.

The Strategy Group Web page was the main channel for communication with the community. Minutes of the Preparatory Group meetings were posted on the website, usually within 24 hours of the meeting. More importantly, it was possible to submit contributions to the discussions through the website; 71 individuals and groups did so. The website also provided a set of links to background material.

The Open Symposium hosted by the Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire in Orsay was a key stage in, the process. It was attended by more than 400 people, with at least 70 more following the proceedings via a webcast. The programme comprised of a series of talks aimed at identifying the key issues for a range of different topics. A particular feature of the symposium was that more than half of the time was devoted to discussions, and this time was indeed filled with a lively exchange of views.

The Briefing Book consisted of three volumes, all of which are accessible from the Strategy Group Web page. The first volume was written by the Preparatory Group, and covered scientific activities (largely based on the presentations and discussions in Orsay) and more general issues. The second volume covered the input received via the website, reports from laboratories, funding agencies and others in response to written requests, and other information that the Preparatory Group felt would assist the development of the strategy. The third volume contained the agenda for the meeting in Zeuthen, procedural details, a standardized vocabulary to describe projects and scientific objectives, and the templates for the strategy statement itself.

The full Strategy Group and official observers met at DESY in Zeuthen on 2 May. This first day was open to anyone and was also broadcast via the Web. It was devoted to talks from three invited speakers, the directors of the invited laboratories and the representatives of the observer states. On the second day, six groups studied the frontier questions in particle physics; improved understanding of the Standard Model; non-accelerator physics and the interface to cosmos; the strong interaction and the interface with nuclear physics; organization issues for the universities, national laboratories and CERN; and inter-regional collaboration. On day three, a plenary session covered the reports from the working groups and agreed preliminary conclusions on elements of the strategy. The next day, while a draft working document was assembled based on the previous day’s discussions, five groups worked in parallel on the needs of theoretical particle physics, industry, technology and knowledge transfer, education and outreach.

The draft strategy document was discussed at Zeuthen in a plenary session on the fifth day. Participants reached a consensus on the general statements, scientific activities and organizational issues, and provided detailed guidance on the complementary issues, which were incorporated following consultations with the chairs of the appropriate working group, thus fulfilling the remit.
Now that Council has adopted the European strategy for particle physics, and with it the responsibility to maintain and update it, the work is done, and the Strategy Group has been dissolved.

Many people were engaged in this process: local organizing committees, speakers and participants at the different discussions. Colleagues submitted opinions and ideas, and all involved people were very committed. We are all very grateful for these contributions.

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