Long-bunch-train ILC studies are back at FLASH
Accelerator theory and operating experience are all well and good. But if you’re planning and researching the next-generation particle accelerator, you sometimes need to crank things to their limits in order to get a step further. The 9-mA team has descended again on DESY’s FLASH accelerator in March to share control room space with the DESY […]
PhD student Christian Soldner studies time, tungsten and scintillators
Good timing is a virtue. Just as comedians have to wait for just the right moment to deliver their punch line, linear collider physicists need to know when to make cuts. These cuts separate phenomena called particle showers from each other, making it possible for the physicists to tell which reaction originated from which collision. […]
Germany celebrates “Weltmaschine” LHC
If you ever take part in a science slam and really, really want to come first, here’s a tip: play music on stage. It worked when Brian Foster played the violin to slam about hidden dimensions back in March and it worked when LHC physicist Klaus Desch from Bonn University in Germany used a piano […]
ILC’s central region gets reviewed
Beam lines, extraction lines, supply lines, final focus, sources, dumps, tunnels, shafts and not to forget the detector hall – the ILC’s central region is a busy place. In a recent technical review held at DESY in Hamburg, Germany, systems like the electron source, the positron source, the connection from damping ring to main linac, […]
Open Day at DESY draws crowds of curious visitors
It’s hard to imagine that not too long ago the mention of particle physics would make people shrug and walk away. Last Saturday, the German lab DESY opened its doors to the public, and busloads of people – families, neighbours, groups of friends – flooded the campus. They tried their hands at manoeuvring overhead cranes, […]
Automated cavity inspection makes progress at DESY
If you have bought a digital camera recently, you probably enjoyed the new ‘smile detection’ feature that many new cameras are equipped with. It works like this: you set the camera to smile detection mode and point it at somebody. The camera recognises faces and as soon as the face smiles, snap – it takes […]
Scientists gather at CERN to launch the new AIDA project, a plan to ease collaboration among Europe's particle physics institutes
When a project has the musical name AIDA but is all about organising the future of detector technologies for particle physics, metaphors from the world of opera only go a certain way. It is therefore understandable, if a bit of a pity, that the 80 European institutes involved in the project decided to gather for […]
New FP-7-health programme brings together hospitals and particle physics
A device used the linear collider’s hadronic calorimeter could soon help detect cancer. It would also be the central part of what is likely going to be the world’s smallest calorimeter – so tiny that it can fit on the tip of an endoscope to be inserted into a person’s stomach. Since January 2011, a […]
German particle physics community discusses recommendation for European strategy process
Germans enjoy punctuality, and Germans like to plan ahead. Though these may sound like tired clichés, the German particle physics community recently lived up to international expectations and met for a workshop to set the strategy for particle physics in Germany in the years to come. The physicists were asked by their funding agency, the […]
As the first in a planned series of workshops, the International Workshop on Linear Colliders had many accomplished missions on the agenda. The ILC, for example, has passed its self-imposed fifty percent mark: half of the nine-cell superconducting radiofrequency cavities produced in the world now reach the desired gradient. The Compact Linear Collider Study (CLIC) […]