The Pink Pig of Success

The WHAT?!?!?!

You read it right, you're monitor isn't malfunctioning, I said the pink pig of success. Never heard of it? Well that's because you don't work in SLAC's communications office…

Every week in our office meeting the director hands out a pink toy pig that, when turned on, walks, oinks and wiggles its tail. The award used to be a golden pig that looked rather like a Buddhist statue, but it was retired when the head kept falling off…

Anyways, I was happily surprised to receive the award this week for my general efforts in keeping a steady flow of stories coming to SLAC Today. I think the straw that tipped the scales were my two stories last Friday about Monte Carlo software and the CosmicVariance blog. The director seemed to particularly enjoy those two. But he also cited the general volume of stories I've been generating, that several days have consisted entirely of my works, and that we're getting along fine with just one intern. (I guess sometimes they have overlapping interns to share the story workload?)

But the pig is soft and nice to pet when I hit a bad spell of writer's block.

For example, I spent the past couple of days whipping out two stories in a very short amount of time. Granted, they were no brainers, just a couple of short pieces to fill in some blank spots in SLAC Today, but they turned out pretty well none-the-less. The first ran on Thursday and was about a small set of three garden boxes at the corner of a nearby building that contain corn, jalapeños, and basil.

I actually had to do some investigative reporting on that one by tracking down the employee the make-shift garden belongs to. Luckily, it belonged to the first person I asked…

The second short ran today and was about the computer help desk moving a few hundred feet to the lobby of their building. Again, nothing special, but I did whip it out in a matter of an hour or so, including interviewing, writing, and editing, which is a pretty fast turn-around time.

To bring this post to a close, just let me say I've only got two weeks left here at SLAC, and probably won't be posting much anymore. Perhaps just a few more total. So enjoy them while you can…

Busy, Busy, Busy

Hello again everyone, it's now Tuesday, which means I missed Monday. Why? Because I'm busy again at work and got home a bit late yesterday. Why am I busy again? You guessed it… McCallum Turner paragraphs and articles!

Who of you out there had 6 of the 11 people getting back to me before the end of Monday? Because if you did, you're the big winner! And in the meantime, my editor and I are scrambling to write these paragraphs up, get the rest of the contacts to respond to us, and write/edit stories for SLAC Today. On top of it all, I'm working on editing and adding a little to the Symmetry magazine feature I'm writing.

Which all leads to me being extremely busy…

And it's nice to see that someone has been busy reading and commenting to my blog as well. Many thanks, it's nice to have a few actual bits of feedback now and then. The rest of you readers could learn a lesson.

That is, if there are any more readers out there… are there? No matter, I'll keep plowing ahead anyways.

As of the end of Tuesday, eight of the eleven paragraphs have been written, two are being taken care of by my editor, and the last we are still waiting on. And after all is said and done, I have to phone everyone up for quotes and more personal touches for SLAC Today articles…

At least I'll have plenty of more time to hunt everyone down.

A New Assignment

I've got two stories online today at the SLAC website, and I really like both of them (as does the head of communications here, which of course makes me happy :o).* The first is about MadGraph/MadEvent, which is a computer software program that creates randomized "practice" events for scientists to analyze and learn from. I spotted it in a pre-print (a summary of a recently released scientific paper) and asked to do a story on it. My editor isn't very thrilled with computer software and programming, but trusted me, and I think it turned out fairly well anyways.

The second story, is about the CosmicVariance blog site that two of SLAC's employees contribute to. I spoke about my experience speaking with them a couple of days ago.

Today I was assigned a new task that will give me experience in an area I haven't really dealt with before. In an earlier post, I spoke about a group meeting with a group called McCallum-Turner who is an outside consulting firm examining the administrative side of SLAC operations. It is part of the communication office's job to tell the lab what's going on and how they can offer feedback and comments.

Or, more specifically, it is now my job to let the lab know this.

The company has identified 11 areas of administration that they are targeting in their examination. Each area has a point of contact from SLAC, and it is my job to take information from them and disseminate it to 11 short articles about each of the areas.

For example, one area is Leadership, but what does this really mean? Is it anyone who is a department head? Is it the director of the lab only? What procedures, forms, etc. fall within this category, and which are of the most interest to McCallum-Turner?

The writing and analyzing part shouldn't be so bad, but it could be a pain to track down 11 different people to interview on a subject they may already be growing weary of. Any bets as to how many make my life more difficult than it needs to be?

*I wonder what the proper form is when ending a set of parenthesis with a smiley face? Do you put two end parenthesis side by side? e.g. :o))? That just doesn't seem right...

The Future of Public Outreach

Another one of my weekly profiles appeared on SLAC Today this morning,* and it is another shining example of why I typically enjoy doing profiles. I was a little doubtful when a coworker approached me with the profile idea of a woman at SLAC who loves things that are "tiki" themed. I didn't see much of a story there.

I was wrong.

Read the profile and you'll find out why. It's a great profile and she's a very interesting person. She's got a great job and does fantastic work on websites, and never went to college. She's self-taught. It flies in the face of everything I've ever been taught about getting a good job in technology…

Anyways, today's topic is about the future of public outreach, particularly at SLAC and similar particle physics labs. There has been a lot of discussion recently on how to modernize the public outreach effort. The ideas range from promoting employees to list SLAC on their Facebook or MySpace profiles to creating an entire lab environment on Second Life.

The Facebook and MySpace outreach/group idea isn't bad, but I don't know enough about Second Life to comment on this. Personally, I don't understand the whole phenomenon, but that doesn't mean that the lab couldn't reach thousands of people through such an effort.

The idea of Second Life is that you create a character, pick a place to live, and create an entire second life for yourself. You get a job, buy clothes, buy cars, meet people, date, and who knows what else. There's a lot of people out there who spend more time on Second Life than they do in their real life. Again, I don't understand this, but it exists, so SLAC should try to capitalize on it.

The other idea is to create some content on YouTube that would highlight the different labs and the science going on at them. Now this is a wonderful idea. The physics is so interesting and forward thinking that there's got to be a ton of visually stimulating places, people, and events they could put on YouTube.

I just read an article that claims YouTube is now responsible for 10% of all of the internet traffic, which is mind-boggling. This is obviously an outlet that you want to take full advantage of, if you can…

*Notice that I just can't bring myself to say "SLAC Today today..."

Cosmic Variance

Welcome back from the weekend everyone. This week is off to a promising start with two stories on SLAC Today. One is a short piece about a Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) intern, who won an award for the summer. It's my third piece that has SULI mentioned in it, so you can see how large of an event it is. The second piece is about an ATLAS workshop occurring this week at SLAC. ATLAS is one of the experiments taking place at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Last Friday I had the pleasure of interviewing JoAnne Hewett and Risa Wechsler who are fellow bloggers. The only difference between me and them is that they have Ph.D.'s and people actually read their blog. The, with five other scientists, contribute regularly to www.CosmicVariance.com. The website was recently reported to be the 4th most visited blog about science and the most about the physical sciences by Science magazine. They have about 4,000 readers every day.

So what makes their website so successful?

I think a lot of it has to do with time. They've been doing it for over two years, and the two guys who started the site had been blogging for over a year before that. Eventually they gathered readers, and brought them all together into one place.

Secondly, it helps that they really know what they're talking about. They are experts in their fields and are constantly on the cuff of cutting edge research.

And finally, they must be very good writers, because just because you know about a topic doesn't mean you can communicate it clearly to others. And they obviously succeed at doing this, or they wouldn't have grown over the past few years.

So what do I think makes a good blog?

Time, talent, patience, knowledge, a good topic, and people spreading the word…

Blazar Revisited

I've got one story online today about some sink holes that about to be repaired on SLAC grounds. The water drainage system is old and breaks down now and then, but SLAC is always quick to right the wrongs. It's not a terribly interesting topic, or story for that matter, and one of the hard parts of the job is making stories like these more readable. Because when you get down to it, the story could easily be told in one or two sentences.

But moving on.

A few days ago my blog featured information garnered from a SLAC scientist about recent studies of a "blazar." I tried to explain it informally here before writing the story as a writing exercise. I want to take the experiment one step further.

I'm posting below the rough draft of the article I wrote based on the information. Read through both, let me know which is clearer, which is better, what I could improve on the article below, and what is good about it. Then, after the story goes through the editing process and the scientist, I will post that as well. In this way, you can get a glimpse of a story before its written, as its written, and after its written.

And, if you feel like it, you can contribute to the editing process.

Enjoy.

When American astronomer H.D. Curtis spied a jet of light emanating from galaxy M87 in 1918, he ignited the study of a phenomenon that continues to this day. The jet consists of elementary particles—electrons, positrons, and protons—enclosed by a magnetic field, beaming from the galaxy's center at nearly the speed of light. Through a number of complex interactions, these particles create gamma rays. Recently, a team of SLAC scientists made a surprising discovery about the source of these gamma rays that raises as many questions as it answers.

M87 is the only galaxy of its kind close enough for detailed observation. Scientists believe that the two jets of particles—pointing in opposite directions from the disc-shaped galaxy—come from a Super Massive Black Hole at the center of the galaxy. Galaxies that actively produce these jets are called quasars. Because one jet points towards Earth, its properties appear more extreme, making M87 a type of quasar called a "blazar."

Scientists have studied the blazar for decades. One question involves the gamma rays it produces. How are they made? Where do they come from?

"We have ideas, but the details are not there," said SLAC physicist Teddy Cheung. "It's a mystery."

It's a mystery that scientists are now one step closer to solving. Cheung and his associates recently determined that the gamma rays are emanating from a disturbance, or "knot," traveling down the jet flow 100 parsecs—326,200 light-years—from its origin. This places gamma ray production 100 times further out than previously believed.

For several years, scientists have been observing this particular knot in several ways. The Hubble Space Telescope observed visible light, the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused on x-rays, and the Very Large Array received radio data. All three showed spikes in the knot's emissions early in 2005. Scientists then compared this spike to gamma ray observations of the entire jet stream made by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS). Because HESS showed gamma rays spiked at the same time, scientists concluded that the gamma rays are produced in the knot.

Scientists have long believed the gamma rays come from an area closer to the origin, where the jet is more compact and processes that would create them are more easily theorized.

"The fact that the knot is producing gamma rays so far away from the jet's origin raises many questions about what exactly is going on in that knot," said Cheung. "Hopefully it's a question that will be solved by scientists in the future."

SLAC… A Great Place to Have Lunch

A few days ago, during the SLAC Summer Institute program, I was having lunch at the SLAC cafeteria when a thought struck me.

"What a great environment to have lunch."

What made me say that?

Well, as I sat there, I realized that I was having lunch with four very different, yet very similar individuals. One was a young, female physicist from Romania, another was a young, male physicist from Germany. Both were at SLAC for the conferences on dark matter.

Rounding out the group were two coworkers, one from Australia and the other originally from Scotland. As you could expect, the ranges of experiences and viewpoints in any topic imaginable would vary, and stimulating conversation would ensue. As it happens, that day we talked about drunk driving laws and general alcohol tolerances of different cultures.

This may not have a lot to do with my education in the way of journalism or particle physics, but it was very good, I think, for life lessons in general. And it's like that all the time at SLAC. There are many permanent residents from every country imaginable, and there are always conferences or meetings going on that attract an even larger international crowd.

It's a great environment to live in, and I think Americans in general could benefit from working in such places. There are many different views on many different topics and many different cultures to learn about. Too often, I think, we get stuck in our own country and don't broaden our horizons. Sure there are differences between Boston, San Francisco, Ohio, Miami, and Texas, but they pale to the differences between France, Spain, Germany, and Romania, which occupy an area even smaller than the United States.

It's not our fault there aren't many other countries around with strikingly different cultures, but we would do well to remember there are other countries out there, and try to visit them once in a while.

Blazars

Yesterday afternoon on my bike ride home from work I stopped by the Physics and Astrophysics building on Stanford's main campus to speak to a scientist about a possible story. Every Friday, SLAC releases summaries of all the scientific papers published by SLAC personnel. The idea came from one of these papers.

I have yet to attempt to write an actual article about all that I learned, which was a ton. It's going to be a challenge to figure out how best to explain the topic, blazars, while not boring anyone or getting long-winded. So, as an experiment, I'm going to try to explain it conversationally here first.

In this way, I hope to fully get my head around the subject and also figure out what exactly the main points are that I need to get across in the future article.

So, here we go.

Scientists believe that the center of every galaxy contains a Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH). This is exactly what it sounds like, a big ass black hole, up to 2 billion times bigger than our sun, which is simply unimaginable.

Some of these are "active," meaning that they are currently spewing forth large amounts of particles in a jet stream. If you think of a galaxy as a Frisbee, the streams are shooting straight out from the center in both directions.

These streams contain electrons, positrons, and protons. These particles interact with a surrounding magnetic field to create radiation and photons. These, in turn, also interact with electrons to produce gamma rays. Nobody is quite sure how these processes happen, or where they happen, but they happen.

These galaxies with active SMBHs spewing out streams of particles are known as quasars. When the jets are more or less pointing straight at us, one stream appears much stronger and dominates the other stream pointing away from us. These are called "blazars."

There is one blazar close enough for scientists to study in detail; a galaxy known as M187. And in the jet stream coming out of M187 are several bright "knots" of "stuff." Nobody quite knows what's going on in them, but we can see them, and study them, which is what the scientists did.

They pointed observation instruments at one knot in particular for several years. In early 2005, emissions of x-rays, light, and radio waves from the knot spiked. At the same time, another experiment recorded a spike in the gamma rays emanating from the blazar as a whole. Thus, they have deduced that the gamma rays are coming from the knot.

This may not seem very exciting, and in reality, it isn't terribly. But this proves that gamma rays are coming from a place 100 times further away from the SMBH than scientists previously thought possible. This raises many interesting questions about the processes occurring in the blazar and the jet stream, and could make scientists rethink some of their assumptions about blazars in general.

The end.

Now I'm going to try to cut this in 1/3, make it more readable, and more interesting.

Wish me luck.

The International Linear Collider

Greetings all. Monday saw a rare absence of work by myself on SLAC Today, but today a story was run that highlights future paramedic coverage at SLAC's fire station. The article itself was pretty easy and straightforward to write, but not terribly interesting. But it did get me out of the office to take a picture of a fire crew at the station, which was fun, because they're good people.

Today's topic deals with Fermilab, located in Batavia, Illinois, about a half hour west of Chicago. Fermilab is one of the world's premier particle physics laboratories. Many ground-breaking experiments have taken place here, and it is home of the current highest energy particle collider in the world.

On a side note, its also a beautiful setting. The grounds are a protected haven for tons of wildlife, including buffalo. The main building is a site to see in itself, as it was designed by someone with rather unique tastes.

But with the Tevatron (the powerful particle accelerator) scheduled to shut down in a couple of years when the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva begins experiments, Fermilab is looking toward the future. And the most ambitious vision of the future is the International Linear Collider (ILC).

Assuming the LHC creates as many results as most physicists expect, the ILC is the next logical step. Though it would collide particles at only 1/28 the energy of the LHC, it would be extremely useful.

Why, you ask?

The LHC will be smashing protons together. Protons are made of quarks and gluons. When they collide, different particles smash together, some annihilate, and some may not. The resulting event is a mess of ricocheting particles as well as newly created mass. The collisions are complex and sometimes unpredictable.

The ILC, on the other hand, would collide electrons and positrons. These are fundamental particles that are not made up of anything else (that we know of). Their collisions would be simpler, cleaner, and easier to observe. So even though the particles would technically have a fraction of the energy as LHC particles, all of that energy would be focused into just one particle and one collision. Technically, each proton at the LHC is made of 6 smaller particles which would divvy up the energy.

The ILC is a long way off and its fate rests in the hands of many different factors. And even if approved, Fermilab would have to win the bid to host the machine. So they are cautiously planning on experiments and projects that would help them win such a bid, but would also prove valuable in themselves if the ILC never comes to fruition.

But it would be nice to bring the frontier of particle physics back to the United States.

What to do?

Alright, this one is for everyone who is still reading my blog from SLAC or anyone on the west coast. I've figured out that I've only got five weekends left here in Palo Alto, including this one, and I need to make the most of them.

So, keeping in mind that I love the outdoors, microbrews, athletics, amazing restaurants and generally having a good time, what should I do with my time?

I've been to San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Yosemite.

I've eaten at Hobbee's, the steakburger place, the original pancake house in los altos, The Cheese House deli in Town & Country Village, The Counter, Oasis Beer Garden, and Gordon Biersch. Anything glaring that I'm missing that just screams "Good Eats" in or near Palo Alto?

Also, I love brewpubs. Here's a list of where I've been nearby...

Buffalo Bills in Hayward
21st Amendment in San Francisco
Half Moon Bay in, well, Half Moon Bay
Russian River up in Santa Rosa
Calistoga Inn & Brewery in Napa Valley
Downtown Joe's in Napa City
Seabright Brewery in Santa Cruz
Burlingame Brewing in Burlingame
Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto and San Francisco
Tied House in Mountain View
Pacific Coast new Berkeley
The Bear's Lair on UC Berkeley's campus

Seems like a lot, but there's a tons more. Anyone know of anything particularly good? Anything that screams west coast I haven't seen or done?

Oh yeah, I went surfing in Santa Cruz too....

The Value of Meetings

In case any of you missed it, I had one story on SLAC Today yesterday. It was about low conductivity water, which flows through large wires for heavy equipment such as magnets and klystrons to cool them off. It's interesting, because you wouldn't think of water flowing inside of a wire. It just seems counter intuitive.

Or maybe it's just me.

Anyways, apparently water isn't very conductive in its purist state. It is the impurities such as salt and minerals that conduct the electricity, which I find fairly interesting.

Anyways, on to today's topic, which was actually brought up at the bar yesterday evening after work. (And yes, I had myself a couple of Guinnesses, is that plural right? I mean come on, they're the same price on-tap as bud light. What would you do?)

Earlier in the day the entire communications team met with a couple of guys from a firm hired to audit SLAC's administration procedures. Our job in the process is actually rather important. We're responsible for letting the site know what they're doing, how the process is moving, and calming any fears or doubts that the faculty and staff may have about the process.

Well, at least I think it's important.

Now, since I've only been there for about 3 months, I didn't have anything to contribute. This could have made the meeting extremely boring (even though we did get a free lunch out of the deal) but I payed attention anyways.

Why? Well, because the director of our office, and several others, had very insightful questions and intelligent ideas. They have this wonderful way of knowing exactly what to say and in what way to say it, and I think a lot of it comes with experience.

Everyone has to sit through boring meetings now and then, it's a matter of life and work, no matter what job you have. The key to it all, and to becoming a good leader in an organization, is still being able to pay attention and contribute in the end.

During my time in Indiana's Department of Media Relations, I rarely attended the weekly staff meetings. Usually I wasn't even in the office on Fridays when they tended to occur, but I also assumed they didn't really care much what I was working on, because it was never much or that important. But now I realize the reason for attending isn't for them, its for me, and my learning experience during my internship.

And so I go to every Symmetry magazine, media relations, and general meetings that I can. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they're boring at all, I'm just saying that I see the value in them, and that I may not have gone to them a year ago.

If I'm not careful I'm going to be a grown up soon. Think I'll go out and have a few beers to knock myself back down a couple of pegs...

Rules of the Site

In the excitement of possibly receiving a massive amount of hits on my last post, I completely forgot to inform you about my story appearing yesterday! My article on the search for dark matter appeared, which you can read about on two former posts here, and here. Or you can simply read the article from SLAC Today by clicking here.

Well my blog has now been officially publicized on SLAC Today and it brought in a staggering total of comments of… zero. Notta. Zilch. Nothing.

Slightly disappointing, but I did receive several comments around SLAC and a couple of emails. Through word of mouth, I believe many people did check in on my blog, its just nobody left any comments.

I can understand why, it may seem like a bother to take the time to leave a comment. Also, to do it properly, you have to sign up for an account to this overarching blogging site. And nobody likes to sign up for something that may eventually lead to their email accounts being spammed back into the Stone Age…

Which brings up an interesting point. Part of the idea of this project is to learn about blogging. What works and what doesn't work? Well, apparently, when you make people sign up for something in order to post comments, you get less comments. This may be an important point for bloggers in general, and for any future blogging I may do.

Unfortunately, I can't change the fact that the blog site that hosts these random thoughts requires you to sign up to properly submit comments (that is, non-anonymous comments). And if they did, there is the chance it could open up an entirely different can of worms. Would people start leaving inappropriate messages with no way to track who is doing it, or to stop them from doing it in the future.

Only one way to find out—give it a shot in the future.

Welcome to my Blog Take 2

Greetings all. Even though this is my 33rd post, it is the first one that will come up when (hopefully) those who read SLAC Today take an interest because of the short article that is running tomorrow. So welcome to everyone who is new to my blog.

It is 33 posts long, but let me assure you, they are short and mostly harmless. (You'll notice I have a fondness of Douglas Adams.) I invite you to take a few minutes and read through them. But if you're busy and overworked, as so many of us get sometimes, allow me to summarize...

My name is Ken, I'm from Ohio, this is part of an independent study for my masters degree in journalism from Indiana University, I'm here until mid-September, SLAC is doing a ton of amazing science, I'm learning a lot about writing and media relations, I'm enjoying every second of it, and I am a sort of beer connoisseur and rather enjoy Guinness and microbrews...

I hope many of you will return often and let me know how I'm doing on my stories on SLAC Today. Feel free to critique, correct anything I get wrong (which is probably a lot), and leave ideas for future stories.

Just so everyone knows, you can leave comments without signing up for a thing, and it takes about 30 seconds to do. But if you don't have an account, comments must be left anonymously, so I just ask that you leave your name in the body of the comment.

So with all of this in mind, please take some time and read through a couple of prior posts. If they really suck and you start to go brain dead, then by all means, stop. But if its even mildly interesting and a decent distraction from work, leave me feedback and help a guy out with his graduate project.

The SSRL - An Inside View

Greetings all, I've got nothing on the website today which gives me free reign to talk about something that happened to me today which was very, very interesting.

I got to see the inner workings of the synchrotraon known as SPEAR3 operated at the Stanford Synchotron Radiation Laboratory, or the SSRL for short.

It may not sound exciting to you, but we're talking about state-of-the-art, drop your jaw, holy %$@* technology here! There are magnets inside that weigh 10,000 pounds. To be installed, they take the roof off and lower them in with a crane. They produce local magnetic fields of two Teslas. That didn't mean anything to me either until my guide told me that's a stronger magnetic field 40,000 times stronger than is produced by the Earth itself!

Granted, the Earth's is much, much larger. But this is much stronger.

These giant magnets, and others that are smaller, are responsible for focusing the beam of electrons, making them wiggle to produce x-rays, or changing their direction. The beam comes to a "wiggler" or an "undulator" which makes the electron move back and forth. This produced x-rays. The x-rays continue on a straight path to a testing station where scientists use them in all sorts of experiments. Meanwhile, the beam of electrons passes by more magnets which deflect it a bit to the left or right. Eventually, the beam goes in a giant circle and produces many different lines of x-rays for scientific use.

Oh, and by the way, it's usually filled with radiation. But the whole place was shut down today for a three-month maintenance and upgrade period, which happens every year, and allows for safe access. Since it's usually a radiation hazard, I don't think they let the general public get a look at this stuff ever, so I had a good time poking around (authorized and careful, of course).

That's it for today, I'll try to get some pictures eventually and keep telling you more about this amazing facility, but I got home from Vegas very late last night and need to get some sleep.

There are all sorts of wires, smaller magnets, tubing, circuitry, and other neat-looking things everywhere.

Detecting Dark Matter

Nothing much in the way of stories published today, so instead I will focus on the second part of my series about Dark Matter.

An earlier blog described the concept of dark matter. Now, I'm going to go into some detail about the article I've written that just got final approval today. It talks about how scientists are trying to prove what dark matter really is, and the techniques they are using.

First, particle accelerators create mass. When the particles are smashed together, so much energy is released, that new mass forms by Einstein's famous equation of E=mc^2. So the more energy you have, the more massive particles you can create, which is why the LHC will be able to probe deeper into the depths of matter than any experiment before.

If any new particles are created by the LHC—remember that everything is still technically theoretical, nobody knows for sure what will happen—they will almost instantly decay into more stable particles. Scientists can not "see" the new particles, but they can see what they decay into.

When the particles are created, they fly out of the event in every direction. And when they do, their momentum, or energy, must be balance. That is to say, the energy from one side of the collision has to equal the energy from the opposite side. When they don't, it means there is a particle shooting out carrying energy that scientists can not see.

Now, detecting a new particle like this does not necessarily mean it is what dark matter is made out of. It could be a brand new particle that has nothing to do with dark matter. To find out, scientists must first detect dark matter in the "real world," that is, outside of a particle accelerator.

To do this, scientists are studying the skies looking for gamma rays, positrons, or anti-protons that don't seem to be coming from anywhere. If found, these sources could mean that there are invisible particles colliding on their own in outer space. Meanwhile, here on earth, or rather under it, scientists are trying to detect a dark matter particle striking a regular particle. By shielding the experiments deep beneath the ground, other types of particles are blocked from the experiment. So if something hits a particle in the experiment, it can only be an invisible particle that made it through thousands of feet of solid rock.

When all of the data finally comes in, and scientists get lucky enough to spot new particles both in the accelerator and outside of it, they must be compared. If their properties are the same, then scientists will have found dark matter.

Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about yet? What was confusing about that whole rant? Let me know so I can do better next time…

Multimedia Requirements

Just one story on SLAC Today this morning about Lylie Fisher who is an artist who recently donated a number of prints to the Director's Office to hang. I talked about meeting her and the director a few days ago, and this story is the product of that meeting.

Yesterday I was asked to snap a picture at the GLAST collaboration meeting being held on site. Today I went and interviewed a few summer interns and was asked to bring the camera for photos. Tomorrow I plan on going out with an employee in the housing department to profile how that office works—and you know I'll bring my camera.

Every story needs a picture, and almost every picture needs to have people in it. This is the law of the land when it comes to SLAC Today articles, and you can guess who is responsible for producing the photos…the writer.

I don't think this is just at SLAC or just for interns either. I think this is a very common requirement in the world of journalism today. Nobody just writes anymore, they have to be proficient at taking pictures and video for online editions. This fact really makes me appreciate the photography class I had to take at Indiana University. Now, hopefully, my pictures don't completely suck and contain a certain measure of style, color, and design.

And I've found that I really enjoy taking pictures. At least, I do when the subject in the view finder is interesting. Sometimes it’s a bit tedious to take pictures for stories here at SLAC, but now and then I get a real treat, like the car show/barbecue picture I took early last week, or the "rat rod" photo I took a few weeks ago.

If you happen to be interested in some more of my photography, such as pictures from Stanford's campus, San Francisco and Yosemite, check out my gallery website at www.kodakgallery.com/kingery.

Clips in Symmetry

This week I get to add another publication to my list of clips when the new Symmetry magazine comes out. Symmetry is a joint publication put out between SLAC and Fermilab, the two largest particle physics labs in the country. It's aimed towards the general public and seeks to explain ideas and theories in simple, easy-to-understand language. But primarily it is aimed towards other scientists to inform them what's happening in the field, and to policy makers to inform them about what goes on at the national labs and the particle physics community.

Whatever the reason or purpose, I think Symmetry is a great magazine. The writing is excellent, it is very informative, and none of the features are too long to finish within 10 minutes. And the artwork is amazing. The photography and layout of the publication makes it fun to flip through.

So while I'm working on editing a feature about poster art at particle physics labs, I've already gotten a couple of short clips in the most recent edition. A few of the stories I wrote for SLAC Today got repurposed in the "Signal to Background" section of the magazine.

This section is a collection of short, quirky stories from different particle physics labs around the world. They're meant to be light and often humorous, to sort of show the human side of the scientists the public often doesn't get to see.

The stories they chose include the one about the physicist who participates in the Russian game show spin-off, the rigging crew at SLAC that wear the same colored helmets, and another I wrote specifically for Symmetry about a pneumatic tube in Canada that shoots radioactive pharmaceuticals to a nearby hospital.

So when you get a chance, check out the online edition, enjoy my shorts, and hopefully take the time to read some of the features to learn a little bit more about particle physics.

P.S. – The "60 seconds" section is excellent, and a truly maddening Sudoku was published last month that I still haven't managed to finish…