All Things Considered, October 6, 2008 · This year's Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine recognizes two landmarks in the history of viral diseases. Two French researchers won for discovering the virus that causes AIDS. And a German scientist got the prize for showing that human papilloma viruses cause most cases of cervical cancer. The scientists will split the $1.4 million prize.
This year's medical Nobel ends decades of speculation about who would win the everlasting credit for discovering HIV — the deadliest virus of our time.
The surprise is not that French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel, but that American Robert Gallo did not share in it. Throughout most of the 1980s, the American and French researchers fought bitterly over who deserved the credit. Eventually, President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac signed a declaration that they were co-discoverers.
Today Gallo directs the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland. Its Web site identifies him as the co-discoverer of HIV. But the Nobel committee said no, the French got there first.
Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said that's the way the scientific cookie crumbles.
"When the Nobel committee looks at it, they look and they say, 'First observation, 1983.' Boom, that's it," Fauci said. "I respect that. It's just too bad, because Bob's contribution was very important. But there's a limited number of people that can get the prize."
The rules say only three people can share a Nobel. And the Nobel committee chose to split the award this year between the HIV and papilloma virus discoveries rather than include Gallo in a singular HIV prize.
Fauci says that while the French were first to isolate the virus, Gallo did a lot of the work that proved it causes AIDS.
"The actual intellectual link between the virus and HIV as the cause of AIDS was really very much slam-dunk in the series of papers in 1984 by Gallo's group" in the journal Science, Fauci said.
Today, Gallo told a reporter he was disappointed. Montagnier, who is in Africa, said his old rival deserved to share the prize. But San Francisco researcher Jay Levy — the third scientist to publish the discovery of AIDS — was content.
"In the end, what they did was quite, quite fair," Levy said. "And I congratulate them."
No such questions hover over this year's other medical Nobel laureate, German scientist Harald zur Hausen. He's worked since 1970 to convince skeptics that human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer. Bennett Jenson, a scientific colleague at the University of Louisville, says zur Hausen has been in the running for a Nobel for a long time.
"He's the founding father, and we would have been sorely upset if he hadn't been the Nobel Prize laureate for medicine this year," Jenson said.
Fauci says zur Hausen was way ahead of his time. It's been 24 years since he first tried to persuade drug companies to develop a vaccine against cervical cancer.
Two years ago, the first such vaccine won approval. Zur Hausen wasn't available Monday. But Jensen says his friend hopes the $350 cost of the vaccine can be brought way down so millions of women around the world can avoid cervical cancer.
by Richard Knox
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Jellyfish Protein Researchers Win Chemistry Nobel
All Things Considered, October 8, 2008 · The scientific work that gets a Nobel Prize these days is often hard to understand and describe. But this year's chemistry award is a crowd pleaser: It went to one Japanese and two American scientists who made things glow in the dark — with a jellyfish gene.
Roger Tsien, a professor at the University of California San Diego; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University; and Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., were recognized for their work in advancing understanding of the machinery inside living cells.
Life is essentially an intricate dance of proteins inside every cell of our bodies — proteins that were too tiny to be seen.
So for decades, scientists have been trying to find a way to make that invisible world visible.
Fifteen years ago, Tsien tried attaching chemical dyes to a protein. It didn't work very well, and he thought what he really needed was a gene that makes the protein visible.
"Nobody knew of such a thing in the literature, but I sort of vaguely remembered that there was this protein thing called 'green fluorescent protein,'" Tsien says.
The protein came from a type of jellyfish and had been purified and described by Shimomura in the 1960s. It also glowed green when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Both Tsien and Chalfie tried inserting the gene that produced the protein into cells. No one knew if the technique would work, Tsien says, but "the amazing thing is that nature suddenly smiled."
The gene worked beautifully in bacteria, worms and lots of other creatures. Under ultraviolet light, it made proteins in the cell glow a ghostly shade of green. Thousands of researchers worldwide now use it to track proteins; they can watch cancer cells or viruses multiply and spread.
Tsien, Chalfie and Shimomura all got telephone calls from the Swedish Academy of Sciences early this morning.
Chalfie says he slept through his call. At a news conference later, he explained that he'd accidentally set his phone to ring very softly. When he got out of bed, though, he remembered it was the day the Nobel Prize in chemistry was to be announced.
"So I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year, so I opened up my laptop and found out that I was the schnook," Chalfie says. "The other two people are very good scientists."
Chalfie's research group was the first to insert the gene that produces the green florescent protein into another cell.
Tsien expanded the technique, creating an entire toolbox of glowing genes. He tinkered with the gene, creating dozens of new versions that glow in many colors. This allows researchers to tag different proteins with distinctive colors and observe their interactions.
"This is a practical Nobel Prize. This is something that has transformed medical research," says John Frangioni of Harvard Medical School.
"When we're able to cure terrible human diseases such as cancer and neurologic diseases, we're going to be able to trace that back to research that at some point used these fluorescent proteins," Frangioni says.
Tsien was thinking that maybe it was time to stop working on florescent proteins and move on to something new. But he says he recently discovered something else about them that's worth pursuing.
"The science calls," he says, "I can't quite punt this one away."
by Dan Charles
Roger Tsien, a professor at the University of California San Diego; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University; and Osamu Shimomura, a Japanese researcher at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., were recognized for their work in advancing understanding of the machinery inside living cells.
Life is essentially an intricate dance of proteins inside every cell of our bodies — proteins that were too tiny to be seen.
So for decades, scientists have been trying to find a way to make that invisible world visible.
Fifteen years ago, Tsien tried attaching chemical dyes to a protein. It didn't work very well, and he thought what he really needed was a gene that makes the protein visible.
"Nobody knew of such a thing in the literature, but I sort of vaguely remembered that there was this protein thing called 'green fluorescent protein,'" Tsien says.
The protein came from a type of jellyfish and had been purified and described by Shimomura in the 1960s. It also glowed green when exposed to ultraviolet light.
Both Tsien and Chalfie tried inserting the gene that produced the protein into cells. No one knew if the technique would work, Tsien says, but "the amazing thing is that nature suddenly smiled."
The gene worked beautifully in bacteria, worms and lots of other creatures. Under ultraviolet light, it made proteins in the cell glow a ghostly shade of green. Thousands of researchers worldwide now use it to track proteins; they can watch cancer cells or viruses multiply and spread.
Tsien, Chalfie and Shimomura all got telephone calls from the Swedish Academy of Sciences early this morning.
Chalfie says he slept through his call. At a news conference later, he explained that he'd accidentally set his phone to ring very softly. When he got out of bed, though, he remembered it was the day the Nobel Prize in chemistry was to be announced.
"So I decided to find out who the schnook was that won it this year, so I opened up my laptop and found out that I was the schnook," Chalfie says. "The other two people are very good scientists."
Chalfie's research group was the first to insert the gene that produces the green florescent protein into another cell.
Tsien expanded the technique, creating an entire toolbox of glowing genes. He tinkered with the gene, creating dozens of new versions that glow in many colors. This allows researchers to tag different proteins with distinctive colors and observe their interactions.
"This is a practical Nobel Prize. This is something that has transformed medical research," says John Frangioni of Harvard Medical School.
"When we're able to cure terrible human diseases such as cancer and neurologic diseases, we're going to be able to trace that back to research that at some point used these fluorescent proteins," Frangioni says.
Tsien was thinking that maybe it was time to stop working on florescent proteins and move on to something new. But he says he recently discovered something else about them that's worth pursuing.
"The science calls," he says, "I can't quite punt this one away."
by Dan Charles
France's Le Clezio wins Nobel literature prize
STOCKHOLM, Sweden October 9, 2008, 01:12 pm ET · France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works characterized by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.
Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.
The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.
"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."
The academy called Le Clezio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France.
The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels 'Terra Amata,' 'The Book of Flights,' 'War' and 'The Giants.'"
Speaking to reporters in Paris, Le Clezio said he was very honored and described feeling waves of emotion upon hearing the news.
"(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he said.
Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied "Why not?"
Le Clezio said he would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm and was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award — the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.
Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctively European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio and last year's winner Doris Lessing of Britain, have won the prize.
The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Last week, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. The comments ignited a fierce reaction across the Atlantic, where the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.
"I was very surprised that the reaction was so violent. I don't think that what I said was that derogatory or sensational," Engdahl told AP after Thursday's prize announcement.
He added his comments had been "perhaps a bit too generalizing."
Asked how he thought the choice of Le Clezio would be received in the United States, he said he had no idea.
"He's not a particularly French writer, if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."
Richard Howard, an award-winning poet who has translated many works from French, including a couple of early short stories by Le Clezio, called him "a very gifted and remarkable writer."
"I loved the first books and I regard him with a great deal of respect and affection," Howard said.
Le Clezio has spent much time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life and often traveled, especially to the world's deserts. The academy said he and his Moroccan wife, Jemia, split their time between Albuquerque, N. M., Mauritius and Nice.
He has published several dozen books, including novels, essays and children's books. His most famous works are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans.
The academy said Le Clezio's long stays in Mexico and Central America in the mid-70s had a decisive influence on his work.
Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.
"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.
Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950. Le Clezio tells the story of his father in the 2004 "L'Africain."
He studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d'etudes Litteraires in Nice. He went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico's early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983.
Le Clezio has taught at universities in Bangkok; Mexico City; Boston; Austin, Texas and Albuquerque among other places, the academy said.
In Brussels, the European Commission said it was "delighted" that the award went to a European.
Besides the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.
The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 — along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.
———
Associated Press writers Malin Rising and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Alfred de Montesquiou in Algiers, Angela Doland in Paris and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
———
On the Net:
http://www.svenskaakademien.se
http://www.nobelprize.org
from The Associated Press
Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honored in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.
The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.
"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveler, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world."
The academy called Le Clezio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with "Desert," in 1980, a work the academy said "contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."
That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France.
The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels 'Terra Amata,' 'The Book of Flights,' 'War' and 'The Giants.'"
Speaking to reporters in Paris, Le Clezio said he was very honored and described feeling waves of emotion upon hearing the news.
"(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he said.
Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied "Why not?"
Le Clezio said he would attend the prize ceremony in December in Stockholm and was already planning to travel to Sweden later this month to receive another award — the Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.
Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctively European flavor. Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio and last year's winner Doris Lessing of Britain, have won the prize.
The last U.S. writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Last week, Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. The comments ignited a fierce reaction across the Atlantic, where the head of the U.S. National Book Foundation offered to send Engdahl a reading list.
"I was very surprised that the reaction was so violent. I don't think that what I said was that derogatory or sensational," Engdahl told AP after Thursday's prize announcement.
He added his comments had been "perhaps a bit too generalizing."
Asked how he thought the choice of Le Clezio would be received in the United States, he said he had no idea.
"He's not a particularly French writer, if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."
Richard Howard, an award-winning poet who has translated many works from French, including a couple of early short stories by Le Clezio, called him "a very gifted and remarkable writer."
"I loved the first books and I regard him with a great deal of respect and affection," Howard said.
Le Clezio has spent much time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life and often traveled, especially to the world's deserts. The academy said he and his Moroccan wife, Jemia, split their time between Albuquerque, N. M., Mauritius and Nice.
He has published several dozen books, including novels, essays and children's books. His most famous works are tales of nomads, mediations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans.
The academy said Le Clezio's long stays in Mexico and Central America in the mid-70s had a decisive influence on his work.
Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.
"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.
Le Clezio was born in Nice in 1940 and at eight the family moved to Nigeria, where his father had been a doctor during World War II. They returned to France in 1950. Le Clezio tells the story of his father in the 2004 "L'Africain."
He studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d'etudes Litteraires in Nice. He went on to earn a master's degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico's early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983.
Le Clezio has taught at universities in Bangkok; Mexico City; Boston; Austin, Texas and Albuquerque among other places, the academy said.
In Brussels, the European Commission said it was "delighted" that the award went to a European.
Besides the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) check, Le Clezio will also receive a gold medal and be invited to lecture at the academy's headquarters in Stockholm's Old Town.
The Nobel Prize in literature is handed out in Stockholm on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896 — along with the awards in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented in Oslo, Norway.
———
Associated Press writers Malin Rising and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Alfred de Montesquiou in Algiers, Angela Doland in Paris and Hillel Italie in New York contributed to this report.
———
On the Net:
http://www.svenskaakademien.se
http://www.nobelprize.org
from The Associated Press
Controversy Embroils Nobel Literature Prize
Even before the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature was announced Thursday morning, it was already drawing attention — for the wrong reasons. An official of the Swedish Academy — which awards the Nobel Prizes — caused a furor last week when he described American literature as isolated and insular, and therefore unqualified for literature's most prestigious award.
Playwright Edward Albee, whose credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story, has gained a sort of cranky perspective when it comes to awards. "All prizes are peculiar," he says. "There's politics in everything, and some judges just don't know what they're doing."
Albee points to a long list of great 20th century writers who were passed over by the Nobel judges: Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and W.H. Auden.
Novelist Richard Russo says you could create a pretty good award out of just that list. Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls. He was baffled when the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, told the Associated Press last month that "Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States."
Russo called the statement "more curious than anything else. This idea of suggesting that literature is in a physical place — that doesn't make sense to me at all." Nor did it make sense to Russo when Engdahl charged that the United States does not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature.
"I think the book itself is the dialogue," says Russo. "If I or any other writer writes a great book, then that book is our contribution to the dialogue."
Some American Writers Were Furious
At least one writer responded to Engdahl's statement with language unprintable here. An essayist for the online magazine Slate proposed that the U.S. secede from what he called "the sham the Nobel Prize for literature has become."
That makes author Francine Prose chuckle. "Actually, I'd prefer to retain our ties with the international community, as attenuated as it might be," she says.
Prose is president of the Pen American Center, which champions writers' rights around the world. Because three of the past four Nobel literature winners have been outspoken critics of the U.S. and its foreign policy, some people have accused the Swedish Academy of favoring anti-American writers. Prose is not so sure.
"Any prize goes through phases," she says, "and it seems as if, for a certain number of years, they're rewarding certain kinds of books, but the range is — and always has been — really quite enormous."
Still, Prose says that Engdahl had a point when he criticized U.S. publishers for not promoting more literature in translation. Novelist Junot Diaz — who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in literature — says something good could actually come out of this controversy.
"If this encourages the average American to read one more book in translation — if only to spite the kind of sneering Eurocentric elitism of this one individual — that's not a bad thing," he says.
Nor would it be so bad, Diaz says, if it incited U.S. publishers to translate more work from other parts of the world. He has a tip for them: the young Mexican writer Martin Solares. His work, Diaz says, is brilliant, but mostly unavailable in English — or, in Swedish.
by Neda Ulaby
Playwright Edward Albee, whose credits include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Zoo Story, has gained a sort of cranky perspective when it comes to awards. "All prizes are peculiar," he says. "There's politics in everything, and some judges just don't know what they're doing."
Albee points to a long list of great 20th century writers who were passed over by the Nobel judges: Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, Jorge Luis Borges, James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov and W.H. Auden.
Novelist Richard Russo says you could create a pretty good award out of just that list. Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Empire Falls. He was baffled when the Swedish Academy's permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, told the Associated Press last month that "Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States."
Russo called the statement "more curious than anything else. This idea of suggesting that literature is in a physical place — that doesn't make sense to me at all." Nor did it make sense to Russo when Engdahl charged that the United States does not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature.
"I think the book itself is the dialogue," says Russo. "If I or any other writer writes a great book, then that book is our contribution to the dialogue."
Some American Writers Were Furious
At least one writer responded to Engdahl's statement with language unprintable here. An essayist for the online magazine Slate proposed that the U.S. secede from what he called "the sham the Nobel Prize for literature has become."
That makes author Francine Prose chuckle. "Actually, I'd prefer to retain our ties with the international community, as attenuated as it might be," she says.
Prose is president of the Pen American Center, which champions writers' rights around the world. Because three of the past four Nobel literature winners have been outspoken critics of the U.S. and its foreign policy, some people have accused the Swedish Academy of favoring anti-American writers. Prose is not so sure.
"Any prize goes through phases," she says, "and it seems as if, for a certain number of years, they're rewarding certain kinds of books, but the range is — and always has been — really quite enormous."
Still, Prose says that Engdahl had a point when he criticized U.S. publishers for not promoting more literature in translation. Novelist Junot Diaz — who won this year's Pulitzer Prize in literature — says something good could actually come out of this controversy.
"If this encourages the average American to read one more book in translation — if only to spite the kind of sneering Eurocentric elitism of this one individual — that's not a bad thing," he says.
Nor would it be so bad, Diaz says, if it incited U.S. publishers to translate more work from other parts of the world. He has a tip for them: the young Mexican writer Martin Solares. His work, Diaz says, is brilliant, but mostly unavailable in English — or, in Swedish.
by Neda Ulaby
French Novelist Awarded Nobel Literature Prize
All Things Considered, October 9, 2008 · French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature. Antoine Compagnon, a professor of French Literature at Columbia University, says there are two periods in Le Clezio's work: it was more experimental in the 1960s and '70s, and later it featured traveling and exoticism.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
3 share Nobel prize for work on AIDS and cancer
Three European scientists shared the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for separate discoveries of viruses that cause AIDS and cervical cancer, breakthroughs that helped doctors fight the deadly diseases.
French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983.
They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.
Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.
The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."
Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.
"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.
Zur Hausen, a German medical doctor and scientist, received half of the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) prize, while the two French researchers shared the other half.
Zur Hausen discovered two high-risk types of the HPV virus and made them available to the scientific community, ultimately leading to the development of vaccines protecting against infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine Gardasil in 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer in girls and women ages 9 to 26.
The vaccine works by protecting against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV — including the two that zur Hausen discovered — that cause most cases of cervical cancers. The HPV virus, transmitted by sexual contact, causes genital warts that sometimes develop into cancer.
"I'm not prepared for this," zur Hausen, 72, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, told the AP by telephone. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."
In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery was one prerequisite for understanding the biology of AIDS and its treatment with antiviral drugs. The pair's work in the early 1980s made it possible to study the virus closely.
That in turn let scientists identify important details in how HIV replicates and how it interacts with the cells it infects, the citation said. It also led to ways to diagnose infected people and to screen blood for HIV, which has limited spread of the epidemic, and helped scientists develop anti-HIV drugs, the citation said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi said that when she and Montagnier isolated the virus 25 years ago they naively hoped that they would be able to prevent the global AIDS epidemic that followed.
"We naively thought that the discovery of the virus would allow us to quickly learn more about it, to develop diagnostic tests — which has been done — and to develop treatments, which has also been done to a large extent and, most of all, develop a vaccine that would prevent the global epidemic," she told the AP by telephone from Cambodia.
Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and a prominent early researcher in HIV, said it was "a disappointment" not to be honored along with Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi.
But he said all three of the award's recipients deserved the honor. No more than three people can share a Nobel Prize.
His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.
In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.
Maria Masucci, member of the Nobel Assembly, said there was no dispute in the scientific community that the French pair discovered and characterized the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, agreed there's no doubt the French scientists first identified the virus. He said they, and zur Hausen, deserved the Nobel.
Fauci said that if additional researchers could have been included, Gallo "would have been an obvious choice to be added to that list."
That's because of Gallo's roles in showing that HIV causes AIDS and in the technical advance that allowed the isolation of HIV, Fauci said.
The Nobel Assembly said zur Hausen "went against current dogma" when he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus, or HPV, caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumors, and uncovered a family of HPV types, only some of which cause cancer.
The discovery led to an understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection, the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi, 61, is director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Union at the Institut Pasteur in France, while Montagnier, 76, is the director for the World Foundation for AIDS Research in Prevention, also in the French capital.
from The Associated Press.
French researchers Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were cited for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, in 1983.
They shared the award with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who was honored for finding human papilloma viruses that cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women.
U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.
Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.
The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."
Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.
"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.
Zur Hausen, a German medical doctor and scientist, received half of the 10 million kronor (US$1.4 million) prize, while the two French researchers shared the other half.
Zur Hausen discovered two high-risk types of the HPV virus and made them available to the scientific community, ultimately leading to the development of vaccines protecting against infection.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine Gardasil in 2006 for the prevention of cervical cancer in girls and women ages 9 to 26.
The vaccine works by protecting against strains of the human papillomavirus, or HPV — including the two that zur Hausen discovered — that cause most cases of cervical cancers. The HPV virus, transmitted by sexual contact, causes genital warts that sometimes develop into cancer.
"I'm not prepared for this," zur Hausen, 72, of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, told the AP by telephone. "We're drinking a little glass of bubbly right now."
In its citation, the Nobel Assembly said Barre-Sinoussi and Montagnier's discovery was one prerequisite for understanding the biology of AIDS and its treatment with antiviral drugs. The pair's work in the early 1980s made it possible to study the virus closely.
That in turn let scientists identify important details in how HIV replicates and how it interacts with the cells it infects, the citation said. It also led to ways to diagnose infected people and to screen blood for HIV, which has limited spread of the epidemic, and helped scientists develop anti-HIV drugs, the citation said.
"The combination of prevention and treatment has substantially decreased spread of the disease and dramatically increased life expectancy among treated patients," the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi said that when she and Montagnier isolated the virus 25 years ago they naively hoped that they would be able to prevent the global AIDS epidemic that followed.
"We naively thought that the discovery of the virus would allow us to quickly learn more about it, to develop diagnostic tests — which has been done — and to develop treatments, which has also been done to a large extent and, most of all, develop a vaccine that would prevent the global epidemic," she told the AP by telephone from Cambodia.
Gallo, director of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and a prominent early researcher in HIV, said it was "a disappointment" not to be honored along with Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi.
But he said all three of the award's recipients deserved the honor. No more than three people can share a Nobel Prize.
His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.
In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.
Maria Masucci, member of the Nobel Assembly, said there was no dispute in the scientific community that the French pair discovered and characterized the virus.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, agreed there's no doubt the French scientists first identified the virus. He said they, and zur Hausen, deserved the Nobel.
Fauci said that if additional researchers could have been included, Gallo "would have been an obvious choice to be added to that list."
That's because of Gallo's roles in showing that HIV causes AIDS and in the technical advance that allowed the isolation of HIV, Fauci said.
The Nobel Assembly said zur Hausen "went against current dogma" when he found that some kinds of human papilloma virus, or HPV, caused cervical cancer. He realized that DNA of HPV could be detected in tumors, and uncovered a family of HPV types, only some of which cause cancer.
The discovery led to an understanding of how HPV causes cancer and the development of vaccines against HPV infection, the citation said.
Barre-Sinoussi, 61, is director of the Regulation of Retroviral Infections Union at the Institut Pasteur in France, while Montagnier, 76, is the director for the World Foundation for AIDS Research in Prevention, also in the French capital.
from The Associated Press.
Nobel Prize In Medicine For Major Virus Discoveries
Morning Edition, October 6, 2008 · The 2008 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine goes to two French scientists for discovering the virus that causes AIDS. A German researcher shares the prize for discovering the viruses that cause cervical cancer.
Half the $1.4 million prize goes to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the AIDS virus. The other half goes to Harald zur Hausen, who established that most cervical cancer is caused by two types of human papilloma viruses.
In the case of HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, the Nobel committee clearly waited until the dust settled over a bitter controversy over who really discovered the virus in the early 1980s — Americans or the French. The committee apparently accepts the results of an investigation done 15 years ago, which concluded that the American virus was actually a contaminant from the French lab.
Zur Hausen's work with HPV led to highly effective new vaccines — among the first to protect against cancer.
by Richard Knox and Steve Inskeep
Half the $1.4 million prize goes to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the AIDS virus. The other half goes to Harald zur Hausen, who established that most cervical cancer is caused by two types of human papilloma viruses.
In the case of HIV, or the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, the Nobel committee clearly waited until the dust settled over a bitter controversy over who really discovered the virus in the early 1980s — Americans or the French. The committee apparently accepts the results of an investigation done 15 years ago, which concluded that the American virus was actually a contaminant from the French lab.
Zur Hausen's work with HPV led to highly effective new vaccines — among the first to protect against cancer.
by Richard Knox and Steve Inskeep
Nobel Honors Glimpse Into Universe's Design
All Things Considered, October 7, 2008 · An American physicist and two Japanese physicists won the Nobel Prize on Tuesday for their work on understanding the breakdown of symmetries in the laws of nature.
Most people intuitively know what symmetry is; they see it in people's faces and in snowflakes. But theoretical physicists think about symmetry as it relates to the fundamental workings of the universe.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, was woken up early this morning by a phone call — a call he'd pretty much given up on. It was Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences, telling him he had won the Nobel Prize for a paper he wrote on something called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Nambu's paper helped explain some of the fundamental forces of nature, and why different particles have different masses.
"My paper came out 1960, I believe. It was a long, long time ago," says Nambu. He added that he's honored and happy to get the prize, but that he didn't expect it after so many years had passed.
He shares the prize, and $1.4 million, with two researchers in Japan. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa explored another kind of symmetry breaking. Their work in the 1970s led to the prediction that physicists should eventually find new types of the subatomic particles known as quarks. And experiments have proved them right.
"These three gentlemen provided theories that explain one of the most fundamental aspects of existence. How symmetric is the universe?" says Philip Schewe, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Physics.
"We sort of instinctively want the universe to be symmetric, we want it to be regular, and the fact that it's not is kind of interesting."
Experts say that understanding asymmetries is important because they are at the heart of what makes life possible.
For example, when the Big Bang created the cosmos some 14 billion years ago, it didn't create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That's a good thing, because they would have cancelled each other out. Scientists are still trying to understand why there was just a tiny bit of extra matter created, a little asymmetry that was the seed of our whole universe. The person who figures that one out might someday win a Nobel of their own.
Nambu came to the United States from Japan in 1952 and is now a citizen. He's worked at the University of Chicago for decades. Some of his colleagues in Chicago say the honor is long overdue.
"We'd been talking about it for years that he deserved it. He's such a shy and humble man; those kinds of people don't always win the prize," says Joe Lykken, a particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois.
"But the Nobel committee has finally wised up and done the right thing for him," Lykken says of the man he calls one of his personal heroes.
Kobayashi and Maskawa's research, Lykken says, was built on the work of an Italian physicist named Nicola Cabibbo.
"These three people — Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa — are mentioned so often together that we usually just say C-K-M rather than saying all three of their multisyllabic names," says Lykken.
Some scientists might wonder why Cabibbo wasn't honored by the committee. But the rules state that the Nobel can go to only three scientists.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Most people intuitively know what symmetry is; they see it in people's faces and in snowflakes. But theoretical physicists think about symmetry as it relates to the fundamental workings of the universe.
Yoichiro Nambu, 87, was woken up early this morning by a phone call — a call he'd pretty much given up on. It was Sweden's Royal Academy of Sciences, telling him he had won the Nobel Prize for a paper he wrote on something called spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics. Nambu's paper helped explain some of the fundamental forces of nature, and why different particles have different masses.
"My paper came out 1960, I believe. It was a long, long time ago," says Nambu. He added that he's honored and happy to get the prize, but that he didn't expect it after so many years had passed.
He shares the prize, and $1.4 million, with two researchers in Japan. Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa explored another kind of symmetry breaking. Their work in the 1970s led to the prediction that physicists should eventually find new types of the subatomic particles known as quarks. And experiments have proved them right.
"These three gentlemen provided theories that explain one of the most fundamental aspects of existence. How symmetric is the universe?" says Philip Schewe, a spokesperson for the American Institute of Physics.
"We sort of instinctively want the universe to be symmetric, we want it to be regular, and the fact that it's not is kind of interesting."
Experts say that understanding asymmetries is important because they are at the heart of what makes life possible.
For example, when the Big Bang created the cosmos some 14 billion years ago, it didn't create equal amounts of matter and antimatter. That's a good thing, because they would have cancelled each other out. Scientists are still trying to understand why there was just a tiny bit of extra matter created, a little asymmetry that was the seed of our whole universe. The person who figures that one out might someday win a Nobel of their own.
Nambu came to the United States from Japan in 1952 and is now a citizen. He's worked at the University of Chicago for decades. Some of his colleagues in Chicago say the honor is long overdue.
"We'd been talking about it for years that he deserved it. He's such a shy and humble man; those kinds of people don't always win the prize," says Joe Lykken, a particle physicist at Fermilab in Illinois.
"But the Nobel committee has finally wised up and done the right thing for him," Lykken says of the man he calls one of his personal heroes.
Kobayashi and Maskawa's research, Lykken says, was built on the work of an Italian physicist named Nicola Cabibbo.
"These three people — Cabibbo, Kobayashi, and Maskawa — are mentioned so often together that we usually just say C-K-M rather than saying all three of their multisyllabic names," says Lykken.
Some scientists might wonder why Cabibbo wasn't honored by the committee. But the rules state that the Nobel can go to only three scientists.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Friday, October 03, 2008
Trouble on Hubble delays last shuttle service mission: NASA
WASHINGTON (AFP) - NASA has delayed the final service mission of the Atlantis space shuttle to the Hubble space telescope, probably until early 2009, after a "significant anomaly" occurred on the orbiting telescope.
"It's obvious that October 14 is off the table" for launching Atlantis, John Burch, the shuttle program manager at NASA's space center in Houston, Texas, told a telephone news conference.
The most likely new launch date for the mission to Hubble would be in February next year, the officials said.
On Saturday, Science Data Formatter side A, the unit on Hubble that took data from five instruments, formatted it and sent it back to the ground, providing NASA with spectacular images of space, "totally failed," Preston Burch, Hubble manager at Goddard space flight center near Washington said.
NASA was working to get Hubble back up and "doing science" in a matter of days by reconfiguring a unit on Hubble that has laid dormant during the 18 years that the telescope has been in orbit, to do the work of the failed unit.
But that would require some complex manoeuvers and would only be a stop-gap measure, the scientists said.
"If we just switch over to Side B of the Science Data Formatter, we would be left with a system that has several single-point failures, and that would be a risk to the mission for the long duration," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
"Barring some unforeseen circumstance, our plan right now is to take the delay and put up the new hardware so that we can keep Hubble going as long as possible," he said.
"If we're going to spend the money and take all the risk involved in a shuttle mission we want to make sure that we leave Hubble as healthy as we possibly can and potentially locked in for the next five to 10 years," Weiler said.
Hubble is due to be replaced in 2013 by a new space telescope with an eagle-eyed camera that scientists hope will lift the veil from the origins and mysteries of the universe.
Every month that the service mission to Hubble is delayed represents a cost to NASA of around 10 million dollars, the officials said.
But the extra cost was unlikely to prompt the US space agency to "throw up its hands and abandon Hubble," Weiler said.
"I don't see anyone throwing in the towel because we have to spend a few more tens of millions to get this done," he said.
"Think about the other option -- if this failure had occurred two weeks after this last service mission," he said.
Launched 18 years ago, Hubble revolutionized astronomy by peering deep into the universe, beaming back dazzling images free of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere.
Orbiting 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, Hubble has enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
All that, in spite of the Hubble program being declared dead in 1990.
"Not only did it survive, but we became the great American comeback story," Weiler said.
"Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity... we'll find a way to get this fixed," he said.
"Luckily we have a spare. We have to test it out and do due diligence to make sure it's working right, but we do have a spare on the ground. We anticipated this kind of problem 20 years ago," he said.
"It's obvious that October 14 is off the table" for launching Atlantis, John Burch, the shuttle program manager at NASA's space center in Houston, Texas, told a telephone news conference.
The most likely new launch date for the mission to Hubble would be in February next year, the officials said.
On Saturday, Science Data Formatter side A, the unit on Hubble that took data from five instruments, formatted it and sent it back to the ground, providing NASA with spectacular images of space, "totally failed," Preston Burch, Hubble manager at Goddard space flight center near Washington said.
NASA was working to get Hubble back up and "doing science" in a matter of days by reconfiguring a unit on Hubble that has laid dormant during the 18 years that the telescope has been in orbit, to do the work of the failed unit.
But that would require some complex manoeuvers and would only be a stop-gap measure, the scientists said.
"If we just switch over to Side B of the Science Data Formatter, we would be left with a system that has several single-point failures, and that would be a risk to the mission for the long duration," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington.
"Barring some unforeseen circumstance, our plan right now is to take the delay and put up the new hardware so that we can keep Hubble going as long as possible," he said.
"If we're going to spend the money and take all the risk involved in a shuttle mission we want to make sure that we leave Hubble as healthy as we possibly can and potentially locked in for the next five to 10 years," Weiler said.
Hubble is due to be replaced in 2013 by a new space telescope with an eagle-eyed camera that scientists hope will lift the veil from the origins and mysteries of the universe.
Every month that the service mission to Hubble is delayed represents a cost to NASA of around 10 million dollars, the officials said.
But the extra cost was unlikely to prompt the US space agency to "throw up its hands and abandon Hubble," Weiler said.
"I don't see anyone throwing in the towel because we have to spend a few more tens of millions to get this done," he said.
"Think about the other option -- if this failure had occurred two weeks after this last service mission," he said.
Launched 18 years ago, Hubble revolutionized astronomy by peering deep into the universe, beaming back dazzling images free of the distortions from Earth's atmosphere.
Orbiting 575 kilometers (360 miles) above Earth, Hubble has enabled scientists to better measure the age and origins of the universe, observe distant supernovas, and identify and study bodies in and outside the solar system.
All that, in spite of the Hubble program being declared dead in 1990.
"Not only did it survive, but we became the great American comeback story," Weiler said.
"Hubble has a habit of coming back from adversity... we'll find a way to get this fixed," he said.
"Luckily we have a spare. We have to test it out and do due diligence to make sure it's working right, but we do have a spare on the ground. We anticipated this kind of problem 20 years ago," he said.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Chinese Astronaut Takes Nation’s First Spacewalk
BEIJING — A Chinese astronaut orbiting the earth lifted himself out of the Shenzhou VII spacecraft Saturday afternoon and performed the nation’s first spacewalk, another milestone in China’s space program.
Zhai Zhigang pulled himself out of the orbital module about 4:40 p.m. Beijing time, latched himself to a handrail with two safety cords and then waved to a national audience during a live broadcast of the country’s third space mission with an astronaut.
“I am here greeting the Chinese people and the people of the world,” Mr. Zhai said, waving to a camera attached to the module.
The feat was part of China’s effort to establish a space station by 2020 and eventually to land on the moon.
For the Chinese government, which devotes extensive media coverage to its space missions with astronauts, the achievement was another step toward establishing the country as an economic and technological superpower.
President Hu Jintao was in the space command center in Beijing on Saturday.
After pulling himself fully out of the orbital module and tethering himself to the safety cords, Mr. Zhai waved a small Chinese flag, to the cheers of technicians in the central command center in Beijing.
Another astronaut, Liu Boming, briefly poked his head and part of his body out of the module, becoming the second Chinese astronaut to touch outer space, while the third astronaut, Jing Haipeng, stayed behind in the re-entry module, which will take them back to earth, in case of an emergency.
About two hours later, the astronauts released a small monitoring satellite.
This was the country’s third human space mission in five years. Before China, only the United States and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, had sent people into space, though astronauts from other countries have joined the missions.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Zhai Zhigang pulled himself out of the orbital module about 4:40 p.m. Beijing time, latched himself to a handrail with two safety cords and then waved to a national audience during a live broadcast of the country’s third space mission with an astronaut.
“I am here greeting the Chinese people and the people of the world,” Mr. Zhai said, waving to a camera attached to the module.
The feat was part of China’s effort to establish a space station by 2020 and eventually to land on the moon.
For the Chinese government, which devotes extensive media coverage to its space missions with astronauts, the achievement was another step toward establishing the country as an economic and technological superpower.
President Hu Jintao was in the space command center in Beijing on Saturday.
After pulling himself fully out of the orbital module and tethering himself to the safety cords, Mr. Zhai waved a small Chinese flag, to the cheers of technicians in the central command center in Beijing.
Another astronaut, Liu Boming, briefly poked his head and part of his body out of the module, becoming the second Chinese astronaut to touch outer space, while the third astronaut, Jing Haipeng, stayed behind in the re-entry module, which will take them back to earth, in case of an emergency.
About two hours later, the astronauts released a small monitoring satellite.
This was the country’s third human space mission in five years. Before China, only the United States and the Soviet Union, and later Russia, had sent people into space, though astronauts from other countries have joined the missions.
By DAVID BARBOZA
China Launches Spacewalk Mission
SHANGHAI — The Chinese Shenzhou VII spacecraft blasted off at 9:07 p.m. Thursday, carrying three Chinese astronauts into space on this country’s third manned space mission in five years.
The three-day mission is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk.
The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will help China establish a space station by 2020 and eventually will put a man on the moon, accomplishments that would certainly bring the country international prestige.
The launching of Shenzhou VII from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, which is in western China, was shown live on state television.
At a ceremony before the launching, President Hu Jintao praised the space project’s effort. “You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission,” he told the astronauts before the launching. “The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return.”
China sent into space three experienced fighter pilots, all of them 42-year-old men. One is expected to walk in space for 30 minutes on Friday or Saturday, according to the state media.
The three taikonauts — the Chinese term for astronauts — plan to run tests in space and launch a small satellite monitoring station. They are carrying traditional Chinese medicine on board, in case of sickness, and their diet includes shredded pork sautéed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce.
One astronaut is wearing what the state-run news media has dubbed “the most complicated, advanced and expensive suit in the world,” a $4.4 million space suit designed and produced in China. The spacecraft was launched by what the Chinese space agency calls the Long March II-F carrier rocket, which took the spacecraft into a low orbit, about 210 miles above Earth. The mission, which is being covered extensively in the Chinese media, is another milestone for a country that got a late start in space exploration but is now aggressively launching commercial satellites, putting humans in space and even shooting down aging satellites.
“They have joined a very exclusive club; only the U.S. and Russians are members,” said Roger D. Launius, a senior curator and expert on space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, referring generally to China’s space program. “It’s a great start, even though it’s nowhere near what the Russians and the U.S. have accomplished with space flight.”
Russia and the United States conducted their first spacewalks in 1965, and in 1969 the United States became the first country to put a person on the moon.
But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA, has repeatedly warned that despite the head start by other nations, the Chinese program is moving swiftly and could overtake American efforts to return to the moon by 2020. In testimony to the Senate last year, Mr. Griffin said it was likely that “China will be able to put people on the Moon before we will be able to get back.” He added: “I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake.”
The Chinese government also hopes the national space program will aid the nation economically by helping to create technological breakthroughs that may someday be applied to computers or other digital equipment.
India and Japan are now aggressively developing their own space programs, creating some competition in Asia for space flight, and the Europeans have joined forces to explore space.
But China says its space program is speeding along, often with Chinese technology, helping establish the country as a technological power and bringing another dose of pride to the nation after the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
Because spaceflight requires large booster rockets and other sophisticated technology that often has military applications, national space programs are often veiled in secrecy, and cooperation among nations is complicated.
Indeed, on Wednesday, the F.B.I. arrested a Chinese-born physicist in Newport News, Va., on charges of illegally exporting space launching technical data and services to China beginning in January 2003. The physicist, Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, was born in China but was a naturalized American citizen. He has a doctorate in physics.
Mr. Shu was also accused of offering bribes to Chinese government officials in exchange for a business contract, according to an F.B.I. statement.
The three Chinese astronauts before the launching on Thursday. The Chinese government hopes the space program can help establish a space station and eventually put a person on the moon.
By DAVID BARBOZA
The three-day mission is expected to include the country’s first attempt at a spacewalk.
The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars in recent years building up a space program that it hopes will help China establish a space station by 2020 and eventually will put a man on the moon, accomplishments that would certainly bring the country international prestige.
The launching of Shenzhou VII from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in Gansu Province, which is in western China, was shown live on state television.
At a ceremony before the launching, President Hu Jintao praised the space project’s effort. “You will definitely accomplish this glorious and sacred mission,” he told the astronauts before the launching. “The motherland and the people are looking forward to your triumphant return.”
China sent into space three experienced fighter pilots, all of them 42-year-old men. One is expected to walk in space for 30 minutes on Friday or Saturday, according to the state media.
The three taikonauts — the Chinese term for astronauts — plan to run tests in space and launch a small satellite monitoring station. They are carrying traditional Chinese medicine on board, in case of sickness, and their diet includes shredded pork sautéed with garlic and grilled beef with spicy sauce.
One astronaut is wearing what the state-run news media has dubbed “the most complicated, advanced and expensive suit in the world,” a $4.4 million space suit designed and produced in China. The spacecraft was launched by what the Chinese space agency calls the Long March II-F carrier rocket, which took the spacecraft into a low orbit, about 210 miles above Earth. The mission, which is being covered extensively in the Chinese media, is another milestone for a country that got a late start in space exploration but is now aggressively launching commercial satellites, putting humans in space and even shooting down aging satellites.
“They have joined a very exclusive club; only the U.S. and Russians are members,” said Roger D. Launius, a senior curator and expert on space history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, referring generally to China’s space program. “It’s a great start, even though it’s nowhere near what the Russians and the U.S. have accomplished with space flight.”
Russia and the United States conducted their first spacewalks in 1965, and in 1969 the United States became the first country to put a person on the moon.
But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of NASA, has repeatedly warned that despite the head start by other nations, the Chinese program is moving swiftly and could overtake American efforts to return to the moon by 2020. In testimony to the Senate last year, Mr. Griffin said it was likely that “China will be able to put people on the Moon before we will be able to get back.” He added: “I admire what they have done, but I am concerned that it will leave the United States in its wake.”
The Chinese government also hopes the national space program will aid the nation economically by helping to create technological breakthroughs that may someday be applied to computers or other digital equipment.
India and Japan are now aggressively developing their own space programs, creating some competition in Asia for space flight, and the Europeans have joined forces to explore space.
But China says its space program is speeding along, often with Chinese technology, helping establish the country as a technological power and bringing another dose of pride to the nation after the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
Because spaceflight requires large booster rockets and other sophisticated technology that often has military applications, national space programs are often veiled in secrecy, and cooperation among nations is complicated.
Indeed, on Wednesday, the F.B.I. arrested a Chinese-born physicist in Newport News, Va., on charges of illegally exporting space launching technical data and services to China beginning in January 2003. The physicist, Shu Quan-Sheng, 68, was born in China but was a naturalized American citizen. He has a doctorate in physics.
Mr. Shu was also accused of offering bribes to Chinese government officials in exchange for a business contract, according to an F.B.I. statement.
The three Chinese astronauts before the launching on Thursday. The Chinese government hopes the space program can help establish a space station and eventually put a person on the moon.
By DAVID BARBOZA
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Stonehenge mystery finally revealed?
IT has been variously described as a giant calendar, a place of worship and a royal burial ground.
But now, more than 4000 years after its first stones were dragged from the Welsh mountains to the Salisbury plains, Stonehenge may finally have given up its secret.
Pictures: Rock stars party at Stonehenge
Pictures: Weird wonders of the world
Research suggests the eerie monument was a neolithic Lourdes to which the sick and injured travelled from far and wide to be healed by its magical powers.
The first excavation of Stonehenge for almost 50 years has revealed the soil to be littered with fragments from its smaller bluestones – thought to have been chipped off as lucky charms.
As well, a disproportionate number of people buried in nearby tombs show signs of serious illness and many were not born in the area.
Taken together, the clues point to Stonehenge being the casualty department of southern England.
The study, by Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University and Proessor Geoffrey Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shows that bluestone chippings greatly outnumber those from the massive Sarsen stones that form the towering trilithon structures of Stonehenge.
What is more, most of the fragments had been deliberately chipped off the stones, which originated 250km away in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire.
"It could be that people were flaking off pieces of bluestone in order to create little bits to take away… as lucky amulets," said Professor Wainwright.
It is unclear why the stones, which are blue-green with white spots, were so revered. However, the idea of the Preseli Hills' healing powers lingers to this day, with spring water from the area said to ease arthritis and other conditions.
Professor Darvill said: "Taking those pieces to become talismans, lucky charms, to be used in the healing process, is very important. Their meaning and importance to prehistoric people was sufficiently powerful to warrant the investment of time, effort and resources to move the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to the Wessex Downs."
The professors said that "an abnormal number" of bodies entombed nearby showed signs of severe illness or injury.
And analysis of teeth recovered from graves showed that about half belonged to people not native to the area.
Prof Darvill said Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell but people who were capable of healing them.
The professors believe the rest of the monument, including the Sarsen stones, which came from Marlborough 40km away, grew up around the bluestones healing centre.
Prof Darvill said: "It could have been a temple at the same time as it was a healing centre, just as Lourdes is still a religious centre."
They added, however, that it was likely the monument had more than one purpose.
Source: Daily Mail
But now, more than 4000 years after its first stones were dragged from the Welsh mountains to the Salisbury plains, Stonehenge may finally have given up its secret.
Pictures: Rock stars party at Stonehenge
Pictures: Weird wonders of the world
Research suggests the eerie monument was a neolithic Lourdes to which the sick and injured travelled from far and wide to be healed by its magical powers.
The first excavation of Stonehenge for almost 50 years has revealed the soil to be littered with fragments from its smaller bluestones – thought to have been chipped off as lucky charms.
As well, a disproportionate number of people buried in nearby tombs show signs of serious illness and many were not born in the area.
Taken together, the clues point to Stonehenge being the casualty department of southern England.
The study, by Professor Tim Darvill of Bournemouth University and Proessor Geoffrey Wainwright of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shows that bluestone chippings greatly outnumber those from the massive Sarsen stones that form the towering trilithon structures of Stonehenge.
What is more, most of the fragments had been deliberately chipped off the stones, which originated 250km away in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire.
"It could be that people were flaking off pieces of bluestone in order to create little bits to take away… as lucky amulets," said Professor Wainwright.
It is unclear why the stones, which are blue-green with white spots, were so revered. However, the idea of the Preseli Hills' healing powers lingers to this day, with spring water from the area said to ease arthritis and other conditions.
Professor Darvill said: "Taking those pieces to become talismans, lucky charms, to be used in the healing process, is very important. Their meaning and importance to prehistoric people was sufficiently powerful to warrant the investment of time, effort and resources to move the bluestones from the Preseli Hills to the Wessex Downs."
The professors said that "an abnormal number" of bodies entombed nearby showed signs of severe illness or injury.
And analysis of teeth recovered from graves showed that about half belonged to people not native to the area.
Prof Darvill said Stonehenge would attract not only people who were unwell but people who were capable of healing them.
The professors believe the rest of the monument, including the Sarsen stones, which came from Marlborough 40km away, grew up around the bluestones healing centre.
Prof Darvill said: "It could have been a temple at the same time as it was a healing centre, just as Lourdes is still a religious centre."
They added, however, that it was likely the monument had more than one purpose.
Source: Daily Mail
A New Contender For Earth's Oldest Rock
All Things Considered, September 25, 2008 · When geologist Jonathan O'Neil goes walking on some flat, exposed bedrock on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay in Quebec, he believes that he may be walking on the world's oldest rocks.
"When you actually walk on the rock, it's kind of special just to think, well, I could walk here 4.3 billion years ago and I probably would have walked on the same rocks," says O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal.
The Earth is only around 4.6 billion years old. Scientists believe it started as a big, hot blob of molten metal and rock, and then began to cool and form a crust. Scientists would love to have samples of rock from those early days. But they're hard to find in part because the planet's surface is constantly changing.
Scientists have found isolated mineral grains called zircons that date back to 4.36 billion years ago, but the rock that was originally around these grains has eroded away. So until now, the oldest-known rock has been the Acasta Gneiss, an outcropping in Canada's Northwest Territories that's thought to be 4.03 billion years old. But O'Neil and his colleagues think their rock could be even more ancient.
Some scientists will question the claim, says O'Neil. "Of course there's going to be controversy," he says. "I'm expecting that."
In the past, scientists have established the age of ancient rocks by looking at the composition of zircons. But O'Neil says his rock didn't have any of those tiny mineral grains. So he and his colleagues used a technique previously used to establish the age of meteorites that looks at the rare elements neodymium and samarium. In their study in the journal Science, they concluded that the rocks could have formed 250 million years before any previously discovered rocks.
"The jury is still out," says Jeff Vervoort, a geologist with Washington State University in Pullman. "Truly, the data are equivocal."
He says the rocks themselves may be 4.28 billion years old, or they could be the product of a two-stage process: For example, they may be younger rocks that formed after a section of early crust separated from the underlying mantle layer at that earlier time.
Still, Vervoort says, "this is an exciting paper with some very nice data on some extremely interesting old rocks. This paper will undoubtedly spur interest in further work in this area, looking for additional evidence from Earth's earliest history."
John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says scientists have long expected to find rocks from this time period. "We've always been puzzled by our failure to find them. So the question then arises: Were the earliest rocks completely destroyed by some unusual process? Or do these early relics really exist and we just don't know how to recognize them?"
He says the method used in this study does look like it could be helpful for identifying sections of the Earth's early crust.
"Possibly, there are even rocks as old as 4.3 billion years," Valley says. "And if that's correct, then they may hold the key to timeless questions about the evolution of the Earth and possibly even the emergence of life."
He says that because life can exist only under certain conditions, finding the earliest rocks should help geologists understand when exactly the Earth became friendly enough for life to evolve.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
"When you actually walk on the rock, it's kind of special just to think, well, I could walk here 4.3 billion years ago and I probably would have walked on the same rocks," says O'Neil, a Ph.D. student at McGill University in Montreal.
The Earth is only around 4.6 billion years old. Scientists believe it started as a big, hot blob of molten metal and rock, and then began to cool and form a crust. Scientists would love to have samples of rock from those early days. But they're hard to find in part because the planet's surface is constantly changing.
Scientists have found isolated mineral grains called zircons that date back to 4.36 billion years ago, but the rock that was originally around these grains has eroded away. So until now, the oldest-known rock has been the Acasta Gneiss, an outcropping in Canada's Northwest Territories that's thought to be 4.03 billion years old. But O'Neil and his colleagues think their rock could be even more ancient.
Some scientists will question the claim, says O'Neil. "Of course there's going to be controversy," he says. "I'm expecting that."
In the past, scientists have established the age of ancient rocks by looking at the composition of zircons. But O'Neil says his rock didn't have any of those tiny mineral grains. So he and his colleagues used a technique previously used to establish the age of meteorites that looks at the rare elements neodymium and samarium. In their study in the journal Science, they concluded that the rocks could have formed 250 million years before any previously discovered rocks.
"The jury is still out," says Jeff Vervoort, a geologist with Washington State University in Pullman. "Truly, the data are equivocal."
He says the rocks themselves may be 4.28 billion years old, or they could be the product of a two-stage process: For example, they may be younger rocks that formed after a section of early crust separated from the underlying mantle layer at that earlier time.
Still, Vervoort says, "this is an exciting paper with some very nice data on some extremely interesting old rocks. This paper will undoubtedly spur interest in further work in this area, looking for additional evidence from Earth's earliest history."
John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says scientists have long expected to find rocks from this time period. "We've always been puzzled by our failure to find them. So the question then arises: Were the earliest rocks completely destroyed by some unusual process? Or do these early relics really exist and we just don't know how to recognize them?"
He says the method used in this study does look like it could be helpful for identifying sections of the Earth's early crust.
"Possibly, there are even rocks as old as 4.3 billion years," Valley says. "And if that's correct, then they may hold the key to timeless questions about the evolution of the Earth and possibly even the emergence of life."
He says that because life can exist only under certain conditions, finding the earliest rocks should help geologists understand when exactly the Earth became friendly enough for life to evolve.
by Nell Greenfieldboyce
Friday, September 19, 2008
Transformer breaks on world's largest atom smasher
GENEVA - With 30-tone to transform that cools the world' S largest particle collider malfunctioned, sustained pressure physicists to stop using the atom smasher just has day after launching it to great brass band, the European Organization for Nuclear Research said Thursday.
The faulty to transform has been replaced and the boxing ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French to border has been cooled back down to near absolute zero - but washout 459.67 dismantle Fahrenheit - the most efficient operating temperature, said has statement by CERN, ace the organization is known. When to transform malfunctioned, operating temperatures pink from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin - extraordinarily cold by most standard, normal goal warmer than the operating temperature.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider was launched Sept. 10, when scientists circled has beam off protons in has clockwise direction At the speed off light. That was followed by has counterclockwise beam.
“Several hundred orbits” were made, said the statement.
One the evening off Sept. 11, scientists were whitebait to control the counterclockwise beam with equipment that keeps the protons bunched tightly and ready for collisions before to transform failed and the system was shut down, the statement said.
Now that to transform has been replaced and the equipment rechilled, has similar attempt is expected shortly to tighten the clockwise beam and prepares experiments in coming weeks, it said.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider is designed to collide protons in the beams so that they shatter and reveal more butt the makeup off matter and the universe.
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
The faulty to transform has been replaced and the boxing ring in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French to border has been cooled back down to near absolute zero - but washout 459.67 dismantle Fahrenheit - the most efficient operating temperature, said has statement by CERN, ace the organization is known. When to transform malfunctioned, operating temperatures pink from below 2 Kelvin to 4.5 Kelvin - extraordinarily cold by most standard, normal goal warmer than the operating temperature.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider was launched Sept. 10, when scientists circled has beam off protons in has clockwise direction At the speed off light. That was followed by has counterclockwise beam.
“Several hundred orbits” were made, said the statement.
One the evening off Sept. 11, scientists were whitebait to control the counterclockwise beam with equipment that keeps the protons bunched tightly and ready for collisions before to transform failed and the system was shut down, the statement said.
Now that to transform has been replaced and the equipment rechilled, has similar attempt is expected shortly to tighten the clockwise beam and prepares experiments in coming weeks, it said.
Broad The High-energy particle Collider is designed to collide protons in the beams so that they shatter and reveal more butt the makeup off matter and the universe.
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Protons and Champagne Mix as New Particle Collider Is Revved Up
BATAVIA, Ill. — Science rode a beam of subatomic particles and a river of Champagne into the future on Wednesday.
After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.
At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.
“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception in 1994. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”
Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.
An ocean away from Geneva, the new collider’s activation was watched with rueful excitement here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which has had the reigning particle collider.
Several dozen physicists, students and onlookers, and three local mayors gathered overnight to watch the dawn of a new high-energy physics. They applauded each milestone as the scientists methodically steered the protons on their course at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Many of them, including the lab’s director, Pier Oddone, were wearing pajamas or bathrobes or even nightcaps bearing Fermilab “pajama party” patches on them.
Outside, a half moon was hanging low in a cloudy sky, a reminder that the universe was beautiful and mysterious and that another small step into that mystery was about to be taken.
Dr. Oddone, who earlier in the day admitted it was a “bittersweet moment,” lauded the new machine as the result of “two and a half decades of dreams to open up this huge new territory in the exploration of the natural world.”
Roger Aymar, CERN’s director, called the new collider a “discovery machine.” The buzz was worldwide. On the blog “Cosmic Variance,” Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan called the new collider “a why machine.”
Others, worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, had called it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.
But Boaz Klima, a Fermilab particle physicist, said that the speculation had nevertheless helped create buzz about particle physics. “This is something that people can talk to their neighbors about,” he said.
The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.
“That there are many theories means we don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Many physicists hope to materialize a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, which according to theory endows other particles with mass. They also hope to identify the nature of the invisible dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the universe and provides the scaffolding for galaxies. Some dream of revealing new dimensions of space-time.
But those discoveries are in the future. If the new collider were a car, then what physicists did Wednesday was turn on an engine that will now warm up for a couple of months before anyone drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of five trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.
Nevertheless, the symbolism of the moment was not lost on all those gathered here.
Once upon a time the United States ruled particle physics. For the last two decades, Fermilab’s Tevatron, which hurls protons and their mirror opposites, antiprotons, together at energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, was the world’s largest particle machine.
By year’s end, when the CERN collider has revved up to five trillion electron volts, the Fermilab machine will be a distant second. Electron volts are the currency of choice in physics for both mass and energy. The more you have, the closer and hotter you can punch back in time toward the Big Bang.
In 1993, the United States Congress canceled plans for an even bigger collider and more powerful machine, the Superconducting Supercollider, after its cost ballooned to $11 billion. In the United States, particle physics never really recovered, said the supercollider’s former director, Roy F. Schwitters of the University of Texas in Austin. “One nonrenewable resource is a person’s time and good years,” he said.
Dr. Oddone, Fermilab’s director, said the uncertainties of steady Congressional financing made physics in the United States unduly “suspenseful.”
CERN, on the other hand, is an organization of 20 countries with a stable budget established by treaty. The year after the supercollider was killed, CERN decided to build its own collider.
Fermilab and the United States, which eventually contributed $531 million for the collider, have not exactly been shut out. Dr. Oddone said that Americans constitute about a quarter of the scientists who built the four giant detectors that sit at points around the racetrack to collect and analyze the debris from the primordial fireballs.
In fact, a remote control room for monitoring one of those experiments, known inelegantly as the Compact Muon Solenoid, was built at Fermilab, just off the lobby of the main building here.
“The mood is great at this place,” he said, noting that the Tevatron was humming productively and still might find the Higgs boson before the new hadron collider.
Another target of physicists is a principle called supersymmetry, which predicts, among other things, that a vast population of new particle species is left over from the Big Bang and waiting to be discovered, one of which could be the long-sought dark matter.
The festivities started at 2 a.m. Chicago time. Speaking by satellite, Dr. Evans, the collider project director at CERN, outlined the plan for the evening: sending a bunch of protons clockwise farther and farther around the collider, stopping them and checking their orbit, until they made it all the way. He noted that for a previous CERN accelerator it had taken 12 hours. “I hope this will go much faster,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the displays in the control room showed that the beam had made it to its first stopping point. A few minutes later, the physicists erupted in cheers when their consoles showed that the muon solenoid had detected collisions between the beam and stray gas molecules in the otherwise vacuum beam pipe. Their detector was alive and working.
Finally at 3:28 Chicago time (10:28 a.m. at CERN), the display showed the protons had made it all the way around to another big detector named Atlas.
At Fermilab, they broke out the Champagne. Dr. Oddone congratulated his colleagues around the world. “We have all worked together and brought this machine to life,” he said. “We’re so excited about sending a beam around. Wait until we start having collisions and doing physics.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: September 10, 2008
After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.
At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.
“It’s a fantastic moment,” said Lyn Evans, who has been the project director of the collider since its inception in 1994. “We can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”
Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.
An ocean away from Geneva, the new collider’s activation was watched with rueful excitement here at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, which has had the reigning particle collider.
Several dozen physicists, students and onlookers, and three local mayors gathered overnight to watch the dawn of a new high-energy physics. They applauded each milestone as the scientists methodically steered the protons on their course at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Many of them, including the lab’s director, Pier Oddone, were wearing pajamas or bathrobes or even nightcaps bearing Fermilab “pajama party” patches on them.
Outside, a half moon was hanging low in a cloudy sky, a reminder that the universe was beautiful and mysterious and that another small step into that mystery was about to be taken.
Dr. Oddone, who earlier in the day admitted it was a “bittersweet moment,” lauded the new machine as the result of “two and a half decades of dreams to open up this huge new territory in the exploration of the natural world.”
Roger Aymar, CERN’s director, called the new collider a “discovery machine.” The buzz was worldwide. On the blog “Cosmic Variance,” Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan called the new collider “a why machine.”
Others, worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, had called it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.
But Boaz Klima, a Fermilab particle physicist, said that the speculation had nevertheless helped create buzz about particle physics. “This is something that people can talk to their neighbors about,” he said.
The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.
“That there are many theories means we don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”
Many physicists hope to materialize a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, which according to theory endows other particles with mass. They also hope to identify the nature of the invisible dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the universe and provides the scaffolding for galaxies. Some dream of revealing new dimensions of space-time.
But those discoveries are in the future. If the new collider were a car, then what physicists did Wednesday was turn on an engine that will now warm up for a couple of months before anyone drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of five trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.
Nevertheless, the symbolism of the moment was not lost on all those gathered here.
Once upon a time the United States ruled particle physics. For the last two decades, Fermilab’s Tevatron, which hurls protons and their mirror opposites, antiprotons, together at energies of a trillion electron volts apiece, was the world’s largest particle machine.
By year’s end, when the CERN collider has revved up to five trillion electron volts, the Fermilab machine will be a distant second. Electron volts are the currency of choice in physics for both mass and energy. The more you have, the closer and hotter you can punch back in time toward the Big Bang.
In 1993, the United States Congress canceled plans for an even bigger collider and more powerful machine, the Superconducting Supercollider, after its cost ballooned to $11 billion. In the United States, particle physics never really recovered, said the supercollider’s former director, Roy F. Schwitters of the University of Texas in Austin. “One nonrenewable resource is a person’s time and good years,” he said.
Dr. Oddone, Fermilab’s director, said the uncertainties of steady Congressional financing made physics in the United States unduly “suspenseful.”
CERN, on the other hand, is an organization of 20 countries with a stable budget established by treaty. The year after the supercollider was killed, CERN decided to build its own collider.
Fermilab and the United States, which eventually contributed $531 million for the collider, have not exactly been shut out. Dr. Oddone said that Americans constitute about a quarter of the scientists who built the four giant detectors that sit at points around the racetrack to collect and analyze the debris from the primordial fireballs.
In fact, a remote control room for monitoring one of those experiments, known inelegantly as the Compact Muon Solenoid, was built at Fermilab, just off the lobby of the main building here.
“The mood is great at this place,” he said, noting that the Tevatron was humming productively and still might find the Higgs boson before the new hadron collider.
Another target of physicists is a principle called supersymmetry, which predicts, among other things, that a vast population of new particle species is left over from the Big Bang and waiting to be discovered, one of which could be the long-sought dark matter.
The festivities started at 2 a.m. Chicago time. Speaking by satellite, Dr. Evans, the collider project director at CERN, outlined the plan for the evening: sending a bunch of protons clockwise farther and farther around the collider, stopping them and checking their orbit, until they made it all the way. He noted that for a previous CERN accelerator it had taken 12 hours. “I hope this will go much faster,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the displays in the control room showed that the beam had made it to its first stopping point. A few minutes later, the physicists erupted in cheers when their consoles showed that the muon solenoid had detected collisions between the beam and stray gas molecules in the otherwise vacuum beam pipe. Their detector was alive and working.
Finally at 3:28 Chicago time (10:28 a.m. at CERN), the display showed the protons had made it all the way around to another big detector named Atlas.
At Fermilab, they broke out the Champagne. Dr. Oddone congratulated his colleagues around the world. “We have all worked together and brought this machine to life,” he said. “We’re so excited about sending a beam around. Wait until we start having collisions and doing physics.”
By DENNIS OVERBYE
Published: September 10, 2008
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