WHAT'S NEW Friday, October 08, 2004

WHAT'S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 8 Oct 04   Montreal, CA

1. OUTER LIMITS: PERIMETER INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL PHYSICS.
The Institute's stunning new headquarters in Waterloo, Canada
opened Saturday.  "Brain power rather than military might is
fast becoming the way countries exercise their sovereignty,"
Prime Minister Paul Martin observed.  The driving force behind
creation of the Institute was entrepreneur Mike Lazarides, who
donated $100 million, and led the drive to get additional
backing from federal and provincial governments.  For three
years, the Institute was in temporary quarters with a small
research staff, but it is now expected to become the largest
concentration of theoretical physicists in the world.  This is
the future.  The great basic research labs of industry are
gone; research funding for university and government labs is
narrowly targeted.  An advisory committee, composed of top
theoretical physicists from around the world, described the
Perimeter Institute as "a bold experiment with the potential
to become the most important new institute in theoretical
physics since the founding of the Institute for Advanced Study
70 years ago."  One member of that committee, Frank Wilczek,
would be awarded a Nobel Prize three days later.

2. THE NOBEL: PHYSICS PRIZE GOES TO AMERICAN QUARK THEORISTS.
David Gross, David Politzer and Frank Wilczek shared the prize
"For their analyses of nonabelian gauge theories at short
distances, and the implications of these insights for the
understanding of the strong interaction between quarks." 
Their 1973 explanation of the strong force that binds quarks
into protons made it possible to show how mass arises in
protons and neutrons.  They were awarded the American Physical
Society's J.J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics
in 1986.

3. THE WRONG STUFF: SPACE STATION IS FILLING UP WITH GARBAGE.  
No wonder there has been talk of abandoning the ISS; have you
ever been through a garbage strike?  When Congress was being
urged to put up the money, the image of the station was of a
spacious laboratory, with its crew engaged in sophisticated
scientific experiments.  Who imagined a crew of only two would
spend their time picking their way through piles of empty food
containers, dirty underwear and canisters of human excrement
to reach a malfunctioning oxygen generator that must be coaxed
to work?  The shuttle/garbage truck return is still
questionable.

4. THE RIGHT STUFF: THE SPIRIT ROVER FACES A NEW CHALLENGE.  
Even as our two senior-citizen geologists on Mars, now 83 in
rover-years, have discovered new evidence of ancient water,
NASA says Spirit's wheels "did not operate as commanded" on
Oct. 1.  I sometimes have the same problem.  Spirit is
disabled until NASA finds a remedy.  I find daily jogging
helps.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.  
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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