Wednesday - March 12, 2008
SLAC Today is
available online at:
http://today.slac.stanford.edu
In this issue:
Team of Scientists Goes Deep, Armed with World's Best Detectors of Dark Matter
People Today: Jeff Brown, Driven
Stanford to Host Conference Examining Impact of Female Influx in Science, Engineering
Conservation Tip of the Week
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Wednesday - March 12, 2008 |
Team of Scientists Goes Deep, Armed with World's Best Detectors of Dark Matter
The CDMS II detectors (hexagons) are stacked in an icebox with six insulating layers to keep the instruments cold. Wires carry measurements from the detectors to computers outside.
A half-mile down in an old iron ore mine in Minnesota, incredibly sensitive detectors have been waiting for a particle of dark matter, an invisible substance that may form the skeleton of galaxies, to make itself known. A consortium of research scientists, including Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) physicist Blas Cabrera, anticipated the detection of a predicted-but-undiscovered dark particle known as a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. The hope was that several WIMPs would travel through space and a half-mile of Earth to plunk themselves into the nuclei of germanium atoms in the detectors, each collision creating a vibration and a tiny puff of heat that would signal the WIMP's existence. WIMPs are leading candidates for dark matter, the unseen stuff that accounts for 85 percent of the entire mass of the universe. Billions of WIMPs may be passing unnoticed through the bodies of humans every second. Read more... |
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Jeff Brown, Driven
Jeff Brown loves life, family and cars. For the SLAC Safety Controls Associate, the latest embodiment of this is his '52 Henry J. Kaiser, which he built over the course of hundreds of weekends and many years. Brown remembers the first time he laid eyes on a Henry J. at a weekend drag race when he was a kid. At six-years-old he would wipe down the tires on his father's dragster and hand him wrenches as they were needed. As Brown got older, his father would take him to races—the stains on his clothes proved it. "I started at a young age," he said. "It bit me. I always wanted to build a car from the ground up." Brown bought his Henry J. from retired co-worker Joel Fitch in 1992, but two years elapsed before he finally began to disassemble it. In the mid-nineties, Brown spent many weekends as the crew chief for a drag-racing team that eventually became division champs. When he finally he got down to using the rare body of the Henry J. to build what he calls a "custom drag car," he took his time to get all the parts he wanted. He did everything himself, except the machine work on the bored-out 450 horsepower engine. In fact, he restored and sold a motorcycle to buy the frame, engine and a welder that he used to customize the car. Sometimes Brown would spend months fabricating parts for the body, not like the end result and do it all over again. Brown now has the car running, but it still needs an interior. Yet that hasn't stopped him from driving it on weekends and taking it to car shows. At a show with 3,000 cars, Brown said he can count on one hand the number of Henry Js there. The most he's ever seen at a single show is five. "You can't be shy driving something like this because everybody looks at you and everybody talks to you," he said. Brown's wife, daughter and son have always supported his hobbies. His 20-year-old son still occasionally serves as the "smart-end-of-the-measuring stick guy" and his daughter, who works for a custom car association, loves it too. His wife takes pleasure in knowing it's there for weekend drives, when they're not out on his Harley. "Both my family at home and my gear-head friends at SLAC have helped with the Henry and listened to my trials and tribulations," he said. "I can't thank them enough." |
Conservation Tip
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Take the bite out of tax time. Don't forget that the Energy Policy
Act of 2005 entitles homeowners to certain energy conservation tax credits through December 31, 2007. Most of the tax credits are described as
Home Improvement Credits, however cars, solar energy systems and fuel cells are also on the list. Some of the individual items contained within the Home Improvement category include: hot water heaters, roofing, insulation, exterior doors, perimeter windows, skylights and storm protection.
See if you qualify for any tax credits at
