Director's Corner

Global Design Effort optimises industralisation models

This week's issue features a Director's Corner from Akira Yamamoto, Project Manager for the Global Design Effort.

by Akira Yamamoto

As part of Technical Design Phase 2, the Global Design Effort has been working towards more realistic and cost-effective industrialisation models for the production of superconducting radiofrequency cavities and cryomodules, as these are primary cost drivers in the ILC construction estimate. To that end, they have been organising a series of visit to cavity and material manufacturers and workshops. The next one is in July 2011 in Chicago, US.

Feature

From CERN Bulletin: Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider – How are discoveries made?

With the LHC up and running, some might imagine physicists just waiting for a Higgs boson to pop up in one of the four experiments, before publishing a paper and moving on to solve science’s next Big Mystery. However this picture is very far from the reality of experimental particle physics today, where results are based on statistics, statistics and yet more statistics.

Feature

Shin-ichi Kurokawa awarded Rolf Widerøe Prize

by Rika Takahashi

Shin-ichi Kurokawa is a mover and shaker in the world of accelerator physics, both excelling in science and effectively bringing the community together to form strong, productive relationships. The European Physical Society has recognized Kurokawa's accomplishments, awarding him the Rolf Widerøe Prize.

Image of the week

Recovery effort at ATF

Image: Nobu Toge

After repairing some hardware components that were broken in the earthquake of 11 March, the recovery work at ATF is now focusing on fixing the overall hardware alignment using an optical survey technique. This will be followed by recovery of the cooling water, excitation of the magnet and the radiofrequency power, and test beam operation later this month and toward summer 2011.

In the News

from BBC News

26 May 2011

New method ‘confirms dark energy’

First results from a major astronomical survey using a cutting-edge technique appear to have confirmed the existence of mysterious dark energy.
from National Geographic

24 May 2011

Densest Matter Created in Big-Bang Machine

“Besides black holes, there’s nothing denser than what we’re creating,” said David Evans, a physicist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and a team leader for the LHC’s ALICE detector, which helped observe the quark-gluon plasma. “If you had a cubic centimeter of this stuff, it would weigh 40 billion tons.”
from AFP

23 May 2011

Europe’s particle collider smashes another record

A month ago, the LHC set a record of 10 million collisions per second. “This is now 100 million collisions per second,” Spiro said at a conference in Paris on the “infinitely small and the infinitely big.”
from New York Times

21 May 2011

Atom-Smasher Retires; Lab Makes Career Switch

Fermi’s future experiments will focus on creating the greatest number of particles, not necessarily the most energetic ones. Scientists plan to create dense, relatively low-energy beams of neutrinos, little-understood particles that have almost no mass, no electrical charge and other quirky properties.
from The Economist

20 May 2011

Dr Van Winkle and the Large Hadron Collider

Discussions are already under way about future upgrades and complementary devices, like a linear collider which would accelerate electrons and their antiparticles, positrons, in a straight line rather than a circle before smashing them head on.

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