I promised a string of articles written by yours truley to appear on SLAC Today this week. I lied. Well, I didn't really lie, I just spoke too soon.
It was announced this past Monday that SLAC's Director of nearly a decade has stepped down and been replaced by a temporary director until a permenant replacement is found. Although the lab knew this was coming at some point, nobody knew exactly when. So, as you can imagine, SLAC Today has been completely dedicated to announcements about the old director, new director, changes being made at the lab, and announcements for events to commemorate the now ex-director.
And wow has it been busy here in the communications office.
People have been scurrying to make sure everything that's happening is being communicated clearly and promptly to the entire site. The subject is touchy to say the least, so everything is being carefully crafted and edited several times before being published. It's been an interesting few days.
And to make matters worse, it was announced a couple of weeks ago that the head of the communications office is leaving SLAC at the end of the year to do the same job for a European fusion project based in France. He has become a steadying influence and face at SLAC and his departure at this critical time of changing directors has added to the general unease permeating the air.
But the lab continues, life goes on, and great science is still being done at SLAC. And they're keeping me very busy in my final few days. I've got about 10 stories or so in some form of the writing process. I'm sure they're happy I'm leaving them with a large number of stories to run while the next intern goes through the arrival process that takes a few days...
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Friday, September 7, 2007
Blazars... The Final Edition
I posted twice earlier about a complex scientific story about Blazars, you can catch up on them here and here.
I first outlined everything I knew in an informal way. Then I posted the rough draft of the story I wrote about the information I outlined. Here, now, is the final text that was edited several times and posted this morning on SLAC Today.
Which do you think is best?
Scattered across the universe, certain galaxies emit enormously powerful jets of relativistic particles intertwined with bursts of gamma rays. Although thousands of these jets have been observed, the precise mechanism by which gamma rays are created has mystified astronomers for more than 15 years. Recently, a team of SLAC scientists made a surprising discovery about the source of the most powerful of these gamma rays that raises as many questions as it answers.
One of the main questions researchers seek to answer about these unique radio galaxies—also known as "blazars" or "quasars" depending on the jet's orientation—is where, exactly, the gamma rays are created. Researchers believe that a black hole at the center of each quasar emits the jet of particles including electrons, positrons and protons. For years they postulated that the gamma rays were created within this jet stream. But later studies led some to believe that the gamma rays were instead produced by a yet unknown physical phenomenon very near the edge of the black hole itself. Now, SLAC researchers Teddy Cheung and Lukasz Stawarz, in collaboration with Daniel Harris at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe they have finally nailed down the location of gamma ray production.
"It's much farther down the jet than most scientists thought," said Cheung. "It's a very surprising result."
Cheung and his associates recently argued that gamma rays are emanating from a disturbance, or "knot," traveling down the jet flow about 326,200 light years from the central super massive black hole in M87, the only jet close enough to Earth for detailed observation. This places gamma ray production in this galaxy 100 times further from the edge of the black hole than previously believed.
To make this discovery, Cheung and his colleagues used data from four different experiments focusing on different areas of the electromagnetic spectrum; the Hubble Space Telescope observed visible light, the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused on x-rays, the Very Large Array received radio data, and the Very Long Baseline Array scanned the radio spectrum. All four showed a pronounced spike in intensity of the knot's emissions early in 2005. The team then compared their data to gamma ray observations of M87 made by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS). Because HESS data also showed a spike in gamma ray intensity at the same time, the team concluded that these gamma rays are produced in the knot.
"The fact that the knot is producing these gamma rays so far away from the jet's origin raises many questions about what makes this location in the jet special," said Cheung. "We think the jet here has been refocused due to interactions with the external medium, but this is just one plausible scenario. Hopefully it's a question that will be solved by scientists in the future."
—Ken Kingery, SLAC Today, September 7, 2007
I first outlined everything I knew in an informal way. Then I posted the rough draft of the story I wrote about the information I outlined. Here, now, is the final text that was edited several times and posted this morning on SLAC Today.
Which do you think is best?
Scattered across the universe, certain galaxies emit enormously powerful jets of relativistic particles intertwined with bursts of gamma rays. Although thousands of these jets have been observed, the precise mechanism by which gamma rays are created has mystified astronomers for more than 15 years. Recently, a team of SLAC scientists made a surprising discovery about the source of the most powerful of these gamma rays that raises as many questions as it answers.
One of the main questions researchers seek to answer about these unique radio galaxies—also known as "blazars" or "quasars" depending on the jet's orientation—is where, exactly, the gamma rays are created. Researchers believe that a black hole at the center of each quasar emits the jet of particles including electrons, positrons and protons. For years they postulated that the gamma rays were created within this jet stream. But later studies led some to believe that the gamma rays were instead produced by a yet unknown physical phenomenon very near the edge of the black hole itself. Now, SLAC researchers Teddy Cheung and Lukasz Stawarz, in collaboration with Daniel Harris at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, believe they have finally nailed down the location of gamma ray production.
"It's much farther down the jet than most scientists thought," said Cheung. "It's a very surprising result."
Cheung and his associates recently argued that gamma rays are emanating from a disturbance, or "knot," traveling down the jet flow about 326,200 light years from the central super massive black hole in M87, the only jet close enough to Earth for detailed observation. This places gamma ray production in this galaxy 100 times further from the edge of the black hole than previously believed.
To make this discovery, Cheung and his colleagues used data from four different experiments focusing on different areas of the electromagnetic spectrum; the Hubble Space Telescope observed visible light, the Chandra X-ray Observatory focused on x-rays, the Very Large Array received radio data, and the Very Long Baseline Array scanned the radio spectrum. All four showed a pronounced spike in intensity of the knot's emissions early in 2005. The team then compared their data to gamma ray observations of M87 made by the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS). Because HESS data also showed a spike in gamma ray intensity at the same time, the team concluded that these gamma rays are produced in the knot.
"The fact that the knot is producing these gamma rays so far away from the jet's origin raises many questions about what makes this location in the jet special," said Cheung. "We think the jet here has been refocused due to interactions with the external medium, but this is just one plausible scenario. Hopefully it's a question that will be solved by scientists in the future."
—Ken Kingery, SLAC Today, September 7, 2007
Winding Down... or Winding Up?
It's been about a week since I updated my posts here. The reason for this is, honestly, blogging just about every day for two months got very tedious. It was too much and I quickly found I had run out of things to talk about. But with my apologies in mind, stay tuned for my final few posts, they'll be worth the wait...
I should put that in my final paper on the blogging experience...
Moving on, today marks one week until my last day at SLAC. And am I winding down with less stories coming across my desk? NO! Ha, that's laughable. As you can imagine, they're going to get their money's worth from me before I leave! And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I would absolutely hate just sitting at my desk for a week mindlessly waiting for my departure day.
So that gives me plenty to talk about. Hooray!
The McCallum-Turner articles have actually come along nicely. I have only a couple more to write for full-length website articles. Although, there are still plenty in the hands of my editors that I have to then get final approvals for, which means relying on others to read through them and send them back. This can be a hassle. But oh well.
Lots of profiles have been assigned to me as well. As you can probably guess, this makes me happy, because I enjoy them and I'm good at them. My editor apparently agrees since she gave me several to do before I leave... (that and she told me that I was)
I completed one recently on SLAC's Housing Office which was fun. The women in the office are extremely nice and very helpful, not to mention excellent at their jobs. I also recently did a story about the Pief Mobile. This is a cart that the first director of SLAC--a world famous physicist--drives around the site in. His assistant recently gave it a few modifications such as lightening bolt decals and special licences plates that read, "e-XLR8R 2." Cute, huh?
I've also got several science stories in the work. One I'm particuarly fond of. It's about trigger software at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Basically this software has to decide whether a particle collision is interesting enough to record or not in 40 milliseconds. This is a tall task when dealing with complicated physical processes, some of which are still theoretical... Story to come soon...
So stay tuned. The next couple of weeks on SLAC Today will be the week of Ken!
I should put that in my final paper on the blogging experience...
Moving on, today marks one week until my last day at SLAC. And am I winding down with less stories coming across my desk? NO! Ha, that's laughable. As you can imagine, they're going to get their money's worth from me before I leave! And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. I would absolutely hate just sitting at my desk for a week mindlessly waiting for my departure day.
So that gives me plenty to talk about. Hooray!
The McCallum-Turner articles have actually come along nicely. I have only a couple more to write for full-length website articles. Although, there are still plenty in the hands of my editors that I have to then get final approvals for, which means relying on others to read through them and send them back. This can be a hassle. But oh well.
Lots of profiles have been assigned to me as well. As you can probably guess, this makes me happy, because I enjoy them and I'm good at them. My editor apparently agrees since she gave me several to do before I leave... (that and she told me that I was)
I completed one recently on SLAC's Housing Office which was fun. The women in the office are extremely nice and very helpful, not to mention excellent at their jobs. I also recently did a story about the Pief Mobile. This is a cart that the first director of SLAC--a world famous physicist--drives around the site in. His assistant recently gave it a few modifications such as lightening bolt decals and special licences plates that read, "e-XLR8R 2." Cute, huh?
I've also got several science stories in the work. One I'm particuarly fond of. It's about trigger software at the ATLAS experiment at CERN. Basically this software has to decide whether a particle collision is interesting enough to record or not in 40 milliseconds. This is a tall task when dealing with complicated physical processes, some of which are still theoretical... Story to come soon...
So stay tuned. The next couple of weeks on SLAC Today will be the week of Ken!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)