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October 2004 (Volume 13, Number 9)

October 2004 (Volume 13, Number 9) Entire Issue

News

House of Representatives Supports the World Year of Physics
The House passed a resolution in July calling for the American public to support both physics and physics education.

Use Your Computer to Help Find Gravitational Waves
Einstein@Home project takes physics to the masses.

Speaker's Program Will Provide Lecturers for World Year of Physics
Be it relativity, black holes or quantum entanglement, there's a speaker available to talk about it.

US Students Win Medals At International Physics Olympiad
Every member of the 2004 U.S. physics team came home from the competition in South Korea with a medal.

Scientists, Engineers Invite Presidential Candidates to Virtual Town Hall Meetings
OPA spearheads effort to engage Bush and Kerry on science policy issues.

Physics and Journalism: Different as Night and Day
Mass media fellow John Vesey gets a real-world education in Milwaukee.

Physics and Journalism: Not So Different After All
Mass media fellow Zerah Lurie sees more similarities than differences.

APS Seeks to Recruit "Physics on the Road" Teams for World Year of Physics
Volunteers sought for local touring demonstrations and hands-on experiments.

APS Meetings Policy Boosts Non-Technical Contributions
Members can submit one each of technical and non-technical abstracts.

Hodapp is New APS Director of Education
Ted Hodapp comes to APS after a two-year stint at the NSF.

Thomas is Selected as 2004-2005 APS Congressional Fellow
Valerie Thomas will spend one year learning the ropes of science policy on Capitol Hill.

Four Terminated, One Resigns in Los Alamos Security Probe
On September 15, Los Alamos Director G. Peter Nanos made an announcement about alleged security breaches.

Opinion

Letters
Dentistry and the Priesthood Better Career Bets than Science — Don't Suppress Debate on Evolution — Regarding the Former Ronald Reagan — Time To Say the "N" Word — Lobbying Efforts are Misdirected — Time Flies When You're Having Fun — Cosmic Rays Discovered in 1911-1912 — Positron Not Predicted Until 1931 — To Tell the Truth

The Back Page
Cultural Divide May Imperil Lab's Survival

Departments

Members in the Media
As quoted in other publications...

This Month in Physics History
October 1807: Invention of the camera lucida

Zero Gravity: The Lighter Side of Science
"Belleville" mystery solved.

Washington Dispatch
A bi-monthly update from the APS Office of Public Affairs

Use Your Computer to Help
Find Gravitational Waves

Chances are your computer spends much of its lifetime doing practically nothing. While you’re at lunch, in meetings, or stuck in traffic, the PC on your desk sits idly marking time at billions of clock cycles per second. At best, it might run a diagnostic test now and then, or generate oddly-hypnotic, but essentially useless, screensaver graphics. Perhaps you've wondered if there's something better that the beige box can do with its time. If so, you're in luck; your computer will soon be able to while away the hours crunching numbers for astrophysics research thanks to Einstein@Home.

The project is part of the World Year of Physics 2005 (WYP 2005), which celebrates the importance and vitality of physics in the new millennium and marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's miraculous year.

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APS encourages the redistribution of the materials included in this newspaper provided that attribution to the source is noted and the materials are not truncated or changed.

Editor: Alan Chodos
Associate Editor: Jennifer Ouellette