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Around the World

Cornell makes progress on Energy Recovery Linac

by Leah Hesla

The idea behind recycling is straightforward: reuse what you have to make more of the same.

Applying this concept, however, is seldom simple.  In the case of Cornell University's Energy Recovery Linac (ERL), recycling energy to generate particle beams requires technological advancements that are born from decades of research.  If scientists there fulfil their mission, they'll be able to use particle beams to accelerate particle beams, producing some of the brightest bunches to be made by an accelerator.

Around the World

Is accelerator research useful?

This story first appeared on 15 January in the ILC Tsushin, the Japanese ILC newsletter, published every month by KEK

by Rika Takahashi

There is a question almost always asked when talking about science - “OK, this is interesting. But is it useful for something?” Not too many scientists working on basic science are good at answering this question. “Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba sometimes says that the neutrino, his main research subject, is not useful at all. Well, a Nobel laureate could say that, but not us. I try to talk more about useful accelerators these days,” said Atsuto Suzuki, the Director General of KEK, at a symposium held in Kyoto, Japan, in November, which was organised by the Advanced Accelerator Association promoting science and technology (AAA).

Director's Corner

Common goals

Today's issue features a Director's Corner from Nick Walker, Project Manager for the Global Design Effort.

by Nick Walker

The SLAC BAW was the second and last such workshop of the so-called Top Level Change Control (TLCC) process, which has been going on for the last twelve months. The SLAC BAW focused on the two remaining TLCC themes: a reduced beam-power parameter set and the location and layout of the positron source.

Image of the week

FALC meets at SLAC

Image: Lori Ann White

Sculpting the future: the members of the Funding Agencies for Large Colliders, or FALC, took a break from their discussions about the next-generation linear collider at SLAC last Saturday to gather around a work of art for a group picture. Read more about their meeting in SLAC Today.

In the News

  • From CERN Courier
    25 January 2011
    Planck reveals a stellar first year
    The first results from the Planck mission, released on 11 January, are already providing new insights into astrophysics and augur well for the future, with plenty more contributions to cosmology still to come.
  • From businessworld.in
    22 January 2011
    Book Review: The Big World Of Small Things
    ‘Collider’ is an extremely readable science book taking you on a scintillating journey into the enigmatic world of particle physics and the contributions of the LHC, an engineering marvel
  • From New York Times
    21 January 2011
    Editorial: The Tevatron
    … Physics is an international pursuit. Fermilab is home to physicists from all over the world, and other experiments will still take place there, as will work with the Large Hadron Collider. Yet it’s lamentable to see the end of an era of high-energy particle experiments in America that defined the threshold of our understanding of matter.
  • From The Beacon News
    21 January 2011
    Fermilab leader promises important work will go on
    BATAVIA — While the Tevatron will close, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory still will have its place of importance in the world of physics research, Fermilab Director Pier Oddone said Wednesday.