In this Issue:

WOW! 625 Descend on Fermilab

A Year & More as the SPS Associate Zone Councilor Representative

Ralph A. Alpher’s Early Career: What Kind of Physicists Were They?

Post Cards from Outer Space

Physics News Update: Top Ten Physics Stories of 2008

ELEGANT CONNECTIONS IN PHYSICS: History of Big Bang Cosmology, Part 4: Alexander Friedmann and the Expanding Universe

Spotlight on SPS Outreach: Fun with physics—Union students inspire local youngsters

A Universe of Wonder: SPS Celebrates International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009)

Links:



Fall 2008   Volume XLII, Issue 3

WOW! 625 Descend on Fermilab


Reflections from SPS Reporters who covered the 2008 Quadrennial Congress of Sigma Pi Sigma. For full reports and extensive photo collections, visit www.sigmapisigma.org/ congress/2008/reports/
Breakfast in one of the historic barns preserved and still used on Fermilab’s campus.
Breakfast in one of the historic barns preserved and still used on Fermilab’s campus. The Laboratory respects the histories of the family farms that were here beforehand.
Photo by Phillip Payette.


Christian University:

The conference allowed all of us to look outside of our
own personal experience as physicists — be it as students, researchers, or teachers — and view things from a more national and global perspective. It brought about reflection on what it means to live not just as a scientist, but as a citizen scientist, and imbued a sense of greater responsibility to the community that invests in us.

North Carolina State University-Raleigh:
The first evening provided a quaint coffee and dessert social where we became fast friends with several interesting individuals.... Students and faculty from schools across the country poured into the hotel throughout the evening and into the next morning, eventually totaling more than 600. Representatives from education and industry were present from as far away as New Zealand and Australia.

Juniata College:
What we found most compelling about the conference was the chance to see and interact with the scientific community.... The chance to listen to some of the giants of physics and scientific citizenship and to meet fellow physics students was spectacular. Brad Dinardo, one of our students, said, “I loved the anecdote told about Galileo by Leon Letterman, and his comparison between the telescope and the LHC [Large Hadron Collider]–how a discovery by the LHC could have an impact on the state of the world that we cannot imagine.

Full article >


Recent Issues of the SPS Observer:
 
• Fall 2008  pdf
 
 
• Summer 2008  pdf
 
 
• Spring 2008  pdf
 
 
• Winter 2007  pdf
 
 
• Fall 2007  pdf
 
   
 
• Spring 2007  pdf
 
 
• Winter 2006  pdf
 
 
• Fall 2006 pdf
 
   
  • Spring 2006 pdf  
   
 
• Fall 2005 pdf
 
   
   
   
 
• Fall 2004 pdf
 
 

• Summer 2004

 
   
  • Summer 2003  
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