'A light read, this book will appeal to all the scientists who at some point in their career stepped on the floor of Fermilab. It will also appeal to those readers who are interested in discovering more about the history of the laboratory through the records of the people who participated in it, whether it was directly or indirectly.'CERN CourierFermilab — originally called the National Accelerator Laboratory — began operations in Illinois on June 15, 1967. Operated and managed by The University of Chicago and Universities Research Association, LLC for the US Department of Energy, it has the distinction of being the only US national laboratory solely dedicated to the advancement of high-energy particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. It has been the site of major discoveries and observations: the top and bottom quarks; the tau neutrino; direct CP violation in kaon decays; a quasar 27 billion light years away from us; origin of high-energy cosmic rays; and confirmation of the evidence of dark energy, among others. For 25 years it operated the world's highest energy particle collider, the Tevatron. Fermilab contributed collaboratively to the Tevatron's successor, the Large Hadron Collider, which discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. Fermilab's core competencies in accelerators, superconducting technologies, detectors and computing have positioned the laboratory for a bright future at the frontiers of science. Today Fermilab scientists, engineers, technicians together with partners from 50 countries are working to explore the nature of the elusive neutrino, enable future x-ray photon science facilities, and construct and exploit higher-energy and higher-intensity particle accelerators. Fermilab is a designated 'American Physical Society Historic Site'.In this commemorative volume, scientific leaders from around the world celebrate Fermilab's 50th anniversary with thoughts on the laboratory's past, present and future.

Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. Fleeing Fascism and anti-Semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as comic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers. In their revealing book, The Pope of Physics, Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin bring this scientific visionary to life. An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi’s life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the twentieth century, this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves.

Prepare to learn everything we still don’t know about our strange and mysterious universe Humanity's understanding of the physical world is full of gaps. Not tiny little gaps you can safely ignore —there are huge yawning voids in our basic notions of how the world works. PHD Comics creator Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson have teamed up to explore everything we don't know about the universe: the enormous holes in our knowledge of the cosmos. Armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and unusually entertaining and lucid explanations of science, they give us the best answers currently available for a lot of questions that are still perplexing scientists, including: * Why does the universe have a speed limit? * Why aren't we all made of antimatter? * What (or who) is attacking Earth with tiny, superfast particles? * What is dark matter, and why does it keep ignoring us? It turns out the universe is full of weird things that don't make any sense. But Cham and Whiteson make a compelling case that the questions we can't answer are as interesting as the ones we can. This fully illustrated introduction to the biggest mysteries in physics also helpfully demystifies many complicated things we do know about, from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes. With equal doses of humor and delight, Cham and Whiteson invite us to see the universe as a possibly boundless expanse of uncharted territory that's still ours to explore.

A distinctive collection of essays, discussions, and personal descriptions of the evolution of particle physics.

CERN, the European Laboratory for particle physics, regularly makes the news. What kind of research happens at this international laboratory and how does it impact people's daily lives? Why is the discovery of the Higgs boson so important? Particle physics describes all matter found on Earth, in stars and all galaxies but it also tries to go beyond what is known to describe dark matter, a form of matter five times more prevalent than the known, regular matter. How do we know this mysterious dark matter exists and is there a chance it will be discovered soon? About sixty countries contributed to the construction of the gigantic Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and its immense detectors. Dive in to discover how international teams of researchers work together to push scientific knowledge forward. Here is a book written for every person who wishes to learn a little more about particle physics, without requiring prior scientific knowledge. It starts from the basics to build a solid understanding of current research in particle physics. A good dose of curiosity is all one will need to discover a whole world that spans from the infinitesimally small and stretches to the infinitely large, and where imminent discoveries could mark the dawn of a huge revolution in the current conception of the material world.