Einstein's Bridge
Page 41
dark
matter
Evidence from a number of sources indicates that the universe has considerable mass which cannot be accounted for as visible stars or even using the best estimates of the total amount of normal matter. This excess mass is attributed to “dark matter”, and the identification of dark matter is a major unsolved problem of contemporary astrophysics.
DELPHI
One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
dewar
A vessel for holding cryogenic liquids, constructed like a large thermos bottle.
DNA
Di-nucleo-rabinic acid. The basic biological read-only library containing a sequence of instructions for the construction of proteins residing in all cells.
DOE
United States Department of Energy.
EA-3
East-Area Experiment 3. A fictitious designation for one of the smaller experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel.
EA-4
East-Area Experiment 4. A fictitious designation for one of the smaller experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel.
Einstein-
Rosen
bridge
A three-dimensional “wormhole”; a topological defect in space-time that provides a shortcut between one region of space-time and another; a little-understood solution to Einstein’s equations of general relativity.
element
numbers
The alien Tunnel Maker refers to the chemical elements by their atomic number. Those mentioned are: 1=hydrogen, 4=beryllium, 6=carbon, 8=oxygen, 10=neon, 14=silicon, 26=iron, 29=copper, 82=lead, and 92=uranium. All of these are elements that might be found in a high-energy physics detector.
Energy
Doubler
Short for the Energy Doubler-Saver, the name given to the Fermilab conversion of their synchrotron from “warm” to superconducting magnets in the late 1980s.
EPA
United States Environmental Protection Agency.
ERDA
United States Energy Research and Development Agency, a predecessor of the present Department of Energy.
FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation, domestic investigative office of the U. S. Department of Justice.
Fermilab
One of two major high energy accelerator facilities in the Unites States operated by the U. S. Department of Energy. It is located near Batavia, Illinois, south of Chicago.
FET
Field-effect transistor, a voltage controlled solid-state electronic device that regulates the flow of electrical current and is a principal component of integrated-circuit electronics.
FSU
Florida State University located in Tallahassee, Florida.
GEM
One of the two major collider detectors planned for the SSC Laboratory. The acronym stands for gamma-rays, electrons, and muons, the three particles the detector was designed to detect. Canceled along with the SSC accelerator project in late 1993.
general
relativity
The “standard model” theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein about 1916. It describes the actions of gravity in terms of the curvature and geometry of space-time.
GeV
Giga-electron volts or 109 electron volts. This the standard unit of energy used in particle physics. The mass-energy of a proton at rest is about 0.94 GeV.
GPS
Global positioning system, a portable electronic device which uses signals from a system of navigation satellites to determine the three-dimensional location and changes in location of the device.
graduate
student
A university student who has completed a Bachelor’s degree and is working on an advanced degree, usually a PhD degree.
Isabelle
A DOE-funded proton-proton collider that was under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory when the project was canceled in 1983 due to problems in superconducting magnet construction.
jets
Clusters of energetic particles observed to emerge from collisions of high-energy particles. Attributed to the emission of a high-energy quark or gluon which, due to color-string breaking gives rise to a group of correlated particles.
KIRO-TV
A television station in the Seattle area broadcasting on channel 4 and affiliated with the ABC network.
L3
One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
LANL
See Los Alamos.
LBL
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a large DOE funded national laboratory founded by E. O. Lawrence and located in Berkeley, California adjacent to the University of California campus. In 1995 the name of the laboratory was changed to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the acronym changed to LBNL.
LBNL
See LBL.
LEM
Leptons and Electro-Magnetic interactions detector, the fictitious designation for one of the large collider experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel. LEM bears some resemblance to the planned GEM detector of the SSC.
LEP
Large Electron-Positron collider, an accelerator facility that has been in operation at CERN since about 1988.
Lexis
A data base service used by the legal profession.
LHC
Large Hadronic Collider, an accelerator facility to be constructed in the LEP tunnel at CERN and that will collide protons at an energy of 8 TeV. The completion of the LHC was postponed when the pressure from the SSC project was removed, and the facility is now scheduled for initial operation about 2005.
Livermore
Short for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or LLNL, one of the two DOE-funded weapons laboratories located at Livermore, California about 50 miles east of San-Francisco.
Los Alamos
Short for the Los Alamos National Laboratory or LANL, one of the two DOE-funded weapons laboratories. LANL is located atop a mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico about 50 miles northwest of Santa Fe.
LLNL
See Livermore.
Makers
A race of intelligent aliens evolved from amphibians which has a high technology civilization approximately a thousand years in advance of ours.
mass-
energy
Physicists tend to consider mass and energy to be equivalent, using Einstein’s relation E=mc2, and the masses of fundamental particles are often quoted in energy units. The mass-energy of a stationary particle is its rest mass, expressed in energy units. The mass-energy of a moving particle is the sum of this and its kinetic energy.
Mathematica
A symbolic algebra and mathematics program widely used by theoretical physicists and produced by Wolfram Research, Inc., Urbana, IL.
MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
mr/h
Abbreviation for milli-rem per hour, a measure of ionizing radiation dosage. Natural background radiation in our environment exposes the average person to about 300 mr per year of radiation.
MRI
Magnetic resonance imaging; originally called “nuclear magnetic resonance imaging” until the term “nuclear” was dropped by the medical profession to avoid alarming patients.
nanometer
A length of 10-9 meters, approximately the size of a molecule.
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the federal space bureaucracy.
Nexis
A data base service used by the legal profession.
NSA
National Security Agency, the federal intelligence agency charged with the responsibility of intercepting messages and breaking codes. A very secret organization whose acronym is sometimes interpreted to mean “No Such Agency.”
NSF
National Science Foundation, the second most important funding agency (after the DOE) for the funding of particle physics research..
Oak Ridge
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (or ORNL), a large DOE funded national laboratory constructed during WWII for separation of uranium-235 for the Manhattan Project and located in the hills of Tennessee about 70 miles from Knoxville.
OPAL
One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
ORNL
See Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy, the degree earned by most practicing physicists.
Planck
mass
The mass, set by the gravitational constant, of the smallest possible black hole. It is the heaviest possible mass for a fundamental particle. The value of a Planck mass is about 1023 eV or about 0.6 micrograms.
postdoc
A postdoctoral fellow. This is the usual job title of a physicist who has received his PhD and wishes to go on in physics research. It is a “journeyman physicist” position characterized by relatively low pay and long working hours.
QCD
Quantum chromodynamics, the theory of quarks, gluons, and the color force. A key element of the standard model of particle physics.
quantum
gravity
A unified theory, not yet formulated but widely sought-after by theoretical physicists, that combines gravitation and quantum mechanics in a single mathematical framework. As one prominent physicst has observed, “the only thing we presently know about quantum gravity is its name.”
rest mass
The mass that a particle has at rest, as opposed to the larger mass it would have when in motion due to relativistic mass increase.
Reynald
toroid
A fictional device described in the novel which employs spin-alignment and high magnetic fields in a torus-shaped alloy for compact energy storage.
RF
Radio frequency, usually referring to radio waves or electrical oscillations at frequencies between 100 kHz and 500 MHz.
RNA
Ribonucleic Acid, the string of nucleic acids transcribed from DNA and containing a sequence of instructions for the construction of proteins residing in all cells.
SDC
One of the two major collider detectors planned for the SSC Laboratory. The acronym stands for Solenoidal Detector Collaboration. Canceled along with the accelerator project in 1993.
SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, a series of searches carried out mainly by radio astronomers seeking directed signals or byproduct radio waves produced by a civilization of intelligent life forms inhabiting another star system. No evidence of such signals has ever been deteted.
SLAC
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, one of two major high energy accelerator facilities in the Unites States operated by the U. S. Department of Energy. It is located near Palo Alto, California just south of San Francisco.
SLC
SLAC Linear Collider, an experiment designed to use one-pass colliding beams from the SLAC linear accelerator in an attempt (which failed) to do definitive measurements of the Z and W bosons before the LEP machine at CERN and its detectors came into operation.
spin
battery
See Reynald toroid.
SSC
Superconducting Super Collider, a double synchrotron designed to produce a head-on collisions between two protons, each accelerated to an energy of 20 TeV. The SSC project was canceled in 1993 by the U. S. Congress.
Tesla
A standard international unit used to measure magnetic fields. One Tesla is about as large a magnetic field as can be obtained from normal “warm” magnets, but super-conducting magnets can do more. The SSC was designed to use superconducting 6 Tesla magnets, and the LHC magnets are designed to produce dual fields (up and down) of up to 9 Tesla.
TeV
Tera-electron volts or 1012 electron volts. This another standard unit of energy used in particle physics. The mass-energy of a top quark is about 0.18 TeV.
Tiger
Teams
Groups of safety specialists and military retirees dispatched by Energy Secretary Admiral James Watkins to review the safety procedures and problems of the DOE-funded national laboratories in the early 1990s. Commonly referred to at the national laboratories as the Safety SS.
Tombigbee Waterway
A water project of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in Alabama and Mississippi aimed at dredging and linking the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers so as to producing a navigable waterway leading to the Gulf of Mexico.
torsion
balance
A delicate but precise scientific instrument that measures minute forces and torques by observing small deflections of torsion springs or fibers.
URA
Universities Research Association, a nonprofit management bureaucracy representing the group of universities. The URA operates Fermilab, Brookhaven, an
d also operated the SSC laboratory until its closure in 1993. The URA was blamed by some DOE officials for loose oversight contributing to the SSC project’s cancellation.
vertex
A point from which many particles emerge, for example the point at which a proton-proton collision occurs in a collider.
VLSI
Very Large Scale Integration, the technology which permits placing complete computers or other elaborate electronic circuits on a single chip of silicon.
VR
Virtual Reality, the technique of sensing head position and feeding an appropriate simulation of reality to each eye and ear separately, to create the very realistic illusion of a reality which in fact exists only within a computer.
W±
The charged mediating particles of the weak interaction, with mass energies of 80.6 GeV. Predicted by the standard model of particle physics and discovered at CERN in the early 1980s.
Z0
The neutral mediating particle of the weak interaction, with a mass energy of 91.161 GeV. Predicted by the standard model of particle physics and discovered at CERN.