I noticed, over the course of working on this week?s cover story The Last Big Bang, that the physicists I talked with had a fine facility for metaphor?which makes sense, given that the subject of their work, particle physics, isn't famous for being overly comprehensible to the lay scientist (or, um, journalist). Bruce Chrisman, Fermilab?s chief operating officer, offered one image that I really liked when he compared the proton to a Swiss watch, and Fermi's particle accelerator to a hammer?if you smash the watch often enough, he said, "if you're clever enough, eventually you figure out how to put the Swiss watch back together again and figure out how it works."?
[ Read more ]
[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]
Source: http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2011/09/29/more-on-fermilab
No comments:
Post a Comment