VIRTUAL PRESSROOM

You can view our previous press release (September 1998) about this meeting and the entire program of online abstracts at our "virtual pressroom" at the following web address: http://www.aps.org/meet/CENT99/vpr/. In the next two months additional press releases, a schedule of press conferences, and numerous lay-language summaries by selected speakers will become available online.

PRESS REGISTRATION

A pressroom will be operated at the Centennial meeting March 21-26, 1999: Complimentary press registration will allow reporters to attend all scientific sessions. If you wish to attend, please fill out and return the registration form at the end of this release. ---Pressroom location: Georgia World Congress Center, room 261W. ---Press conferences: room 275W. ---Pressroom hours: Sun noon to 5 PM, Mon-Thur 8 AM to 5 PM, Friday 8 AM to noon. ---Pressroom phone numbers: 404-222-5400, 5401, 5402 ---Pressroom fax number: 404-222-5403 Breakfast and lunch food will be available Monday-Thursday. If you plan to attend the meeting, we urge you to consult the online meeting page for information about reserving a hotel room in Atlanta. (They're going quickly; information available at this website: http://www.aps.org/meet/CENT99, then select "housing.")

THE UNIVERSE FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA

The scope of the meeting is infinite, from atoms to the universe as a whole. All of the APS units will be represented at the meeting, so one will be able to hear talks about (from small to large) quarks, protons, nuclei, atoms, molecules, DNA, living organisms, crystalline solids, gases, liquids, granular materials, planets, plasmas, stars, galactic clusters, and the microwave background.

In temperature, the subject matter extends from billionths to billions of kelvin, in pressure from billionths to billions of pascals. Laser power starts with milliwatts and goes all the way up petawatts (10^15 watts), while computer power goes from single qubits to petabytes. Particles under discussion are sometimes free, or quasi-free, but more often than not are subject to some kind of restraining order while they are subjected to quantum dots, quantum wells, quantum contacts, quantum interference, quantum chaos, quantum gravity, quantum computers, quantum teleportation, quantum logic, and quantum pinball. Indeed, the confinement of electrons, and the implication of this for the movement of information (ultimately a trillion-dollar endeavor), is one of the primary motifs of the meeting.

STEPHEN HAWKING

The world*s most famous scientist, inheritor of Isaac Newton*s chair at Cambridge University, will give a talk at the meeting, in the evening of Wednesday, March 24. The topic and location of the talk will be determined shortly.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

Here is a quick recapitulation of some of the special events mentioned in our September 1998 press release. For example, the Atlanta will bring together the greatest gathering of Nobelists (at least 50) outside of Sweden, and the largest meeting ever of physics prize-winners anywhere.

President Clinton and Vice President Gore have been invited to speak at the meeting. The keynote address will take place at 8:30 AM, Monday, March 22.. Other prominent plenary talks scheduled for March 22 and 23 include "Physics of the Very Big and Very Small," by Steven Weinberg, "The Impact of Physics on Medicine and Biology," by Harold Varmus, Gordon Moore ("Moore*s Law") on integrated circuits, and policy talks by Senator Joseph Lieberman, Rep. Vernon Ehlers, and Rita Colwell.

Other special centennial talk subjects include lasers and biology (Steven Chu); atomic clocks (David Wineland); breakthroughs of women in physics (Martha Krebs, head of the DOE office of energy management); chaos (Mitchell Feigenbaum); Einstein*s legacy (Robert Kirshner, David Spergel, Joseph Taylor, Kip Thorne); electronic structure and semiconductors (Federico Capasso, Richard Webb, Horst Stormer); the impact of computing on physics (Ernest Moniz, DOE under secretary); the impact of immigration on US physics (Steven Chu, Aron Pinczuk); the impact of lasers (Charles Townes, Nicolaas Bloembergen, William Phillips); industrial physics (William Brinkman, Paul Horn); precision measurements (Gerald Gabrielse, Theodor Hansch, Carl Weiman); the search for the ultimate structure of matter (Leon Lederman, T.D. Lee, Burton Richter, Edward Witten); and unsolved problems in astrophysics (Geoffrey Marcy, Roger Blandford, Michael Turner).

CENTENNIAL WEBSITE

A fuller list of centennial activities is posted at a special APS website: http://www.aps.org/centennial/index.html. For example, a series of popular nighttime lectures has been arranged. Topics include the physics of sports, fractals and art, beer, and the physics of Star Trek (Lawrence Krauss).

PRESS TOUR

Visits to several local university labs will take place on Thursday afternoon, March 24.

SELECTED SESSIONS

The following is a preliminary list of some of the highlights of the Atlanta meeting:

A Photonic Crystal Laser.

Consisting of slender bars arranged in a regularly repeating pattern, a photonic crystal is an object that prevents the escape of light waves having a certain range of colors or wavelengths. Modifying the basic pattern of a photonic crystal can cause it to force light to travel in specific paths. As an "optical waveguide" it redirects light more than three times more efficiently than traditional waveguides. Such waveguides could cause light to bounce back and forth, in essence creating a highly efficient mirror. Physicists have hoped that such mirrors could serve as a basis for a new kind of low-power laser. Now, Attila Mekis of MIT and Lucent Technologies and his colleagues have built a photonic-crystal laser which guides light in two dimensions. They will present experimental measurements of this device. ( Paper BC31.07)

Early Cancer Detection with Laser Spectroscopy.

Many physics discoveries and techniques*including x rays, nuclear magnetic resonance, and ultrasound--have been successfully applied to medicine. The laser is another example--and now physicists are developing what may be one of its most exciting applications yet*the ability of laser light to detect subtle visual signatures of disease at an early stage. In the body, the presence of disease alters the chemical composition and shape of the affected tissue. These microscopic alterations can be detected by shining laser light on tissue and studying the spectrum of light reflected from it, leading to non-invasive diagnosis without the need for an invasive biopsy. Once detected with lasers, such diseased tissue may be treated, effectively ridding the body of the risk of developing potentially deadlydiseases, such as cancer. Mary-Ann Mylnek of Drexel University will illustrate the application of "laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy" to the detection of epithelial dysplasia - a pre-malignant skin condition leading to cancer. (Paper FC32.01)

Why Aren*t There More Women in Physics?

Session JB21 looks at several of the issues that result in the low percentage of women working in physics and astronomy. One example is the "two-body problem." Only 6% of married male physicists have physicist spouses, whereas 45% of married female physicists have physicist spouses. Getting a job in physics is difficult enough, but having to find two jobs simultaneously in the same institution is even trickier.

New Possibilities for DNA Computers.

In the marriage of computer science and molecular biology known as DNA computing, scientists create fragments of DNA*whose letters represent computer data and instructions*and mix them together in test tubes to solve problems, such as the shortest path through a number of cities. Allen Mills of Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies will show that it is possible to use DNA to construct a massive neural network*computers modeled after the human nervous system*with a connectivity of 1 trillion synapses, or 1% of a human brain. Simon Berkovich of George Washington speculates that the DNA in a biological organism serves a role comparable to a barcode: it provides classification, so that small differences are enough to distinguish between species, and it provides a unique ID number that is responsible for the biological individuality of an organism. (Session BC31)

The Meter Bar is History.

The universe is a big place and so we carved it into manageable portions in a variety of ways: time into seconds, space into meters, mass into kilograms, resistance into ohms, and so forth. Session JA01 shows how this came to be and how the use of physical artifacts, such as the standard meter bar kept (a piece of metal with two scratches in it to denote the meter) in a vault near Paris, has been replaced by parts-per-billion precision methods tied to the flutter of atoms.

Black Silicon.

Silicon*the raw ingredient of computer chips and modern electronics--often has a dark bluish-grey color. Changing its color, however, may lead to more efficient solar panels, researchers have discovered. By repeatedly shining pulses of femtosecond laser light*light pulses that last for quadrillionths of a second--Claudia Wu and her colleagues at Harvard have made microscopic black spots on silicon. As it turns out, these spots absorb significantly larger amounts of light than comparable areas on traditional silicon. The researchers believe that such "spiked" silicon can lead to highly efficient light absorbers for solar cells and photodetectors. (Paper IC07.10)

Fertilize Locally but Think Globally.

Anthropogenic carbon flow is primarily in the energy sector and has an immense effect on the worldwide economy. The corresponding nitrogen flow is primarily in the agricultural sector and its effects more evident on a local level. Example: fertilizer runoff has created a 1000-mile hypoxic deadzone (thousands of square miles) for fish where the Mississippi meets the Gulf of Mexico. For these reasons, argues Robert Socolow of Princeton, the sustainability of nitrogen use ought to receive greater attention. (Paper VB15.03)

Petabyte Recreation of the Early Universe.

When particles smash into each other at high energy accelerators a miniature fireball is ignited; in a volume less than the size of an atom, hothouse conditions resembling those of the very early universe are created. The fiery collisions are often followed by a prompt blizzard of secondary particles spawned courtesy of E=mc^2 (motion energy converted into matter energy). Tracking, sorting, and assessing this jumble requires the world*s fastest electronics, consisting of such items as silicon microstrip detectors, lead glass scintillators, vertex trackers, and drift chambers. At the highest energy colliders, such as the Tevatron at Fermilab, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC will be ready later this year at Brookhaven), and the Large Hadron Collider (at CERN by 2005), computers will have to keep up with (and indeed control) the furious pace of data collection, probably at the petabyte scale. (Session OB09.)

History of Physics in National Defense.

Hans Bethe, the man who wrote out the nuclear reactions that govern the production of energy in the Sun, was in charge of the theory division on the Manhattan Project, which lead to the construction of the first atomic bombs. He will discuss his personal recollections of the World War II project, including the Trinity test in New Mexico where the first atomic bomb was exploded. C. Paul Robinson, the president of Sandia National Labs, will argue that the success or failure of the international Chemical Weapons Convention and the proposed Biological Weapons Convention will depend upon new technology to enable the monitoring of these challenging and unique threats. A.D. Wheelon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will discuss details about physicists* role in developing strategic reconnaissance programs during the Cold War. (Session SA03)

The Rental Car Problem.

Kristen Joan Russell of the Northwestern State University of Louisiana will discuss an intriguing mathematical connection between Fermat*s principle*in which light chooses a path that minimizes the time of travel as it passes through different substances*and the often vexing "rental car problem," in which one tries to minimize the cost of fuel in a round trip between cities with varying prices of fuel along the way*all while returning with a full tank. (OC38.17) Incidentally, Russell is an undergraduate (a student of Gary White, 318-357-5214). This talk and many other examples of creative undergraduate physics research will be showcased at four Society of Physics Students sessions. (BC11, IC11, LC11, OC38)

Nuclear Physics with Lasers.

Irradiating solid targets at very high intensities with a very short pulse of laser light from a short-pulse laser like Livermore*s Petawatt laser (the most powerful in the world) can create not only very high-energy electrons, but also provides very bright beams of gamma rays that can induce nuclear reactions in the target materials. Following up on late-breaking results presented in November, Tom Cowan of Livermore will provide a review and update on these experiments, which include the creation of 100 MeV electrons (a new record for electrons coming from a solid), positrons moving at relativistic speeds, and various photo-nuclear reactions (RP01.88).

Supernovae in the Universe and on Lasers.

Core-collapse supernovas (SNe) represent one of nature*s most dramatic events, the catastrophic explosion of a massive star. Owing to their intrinsic brightness, they are used to gauge the distances to the outermost reaches of the space, allowing the rate of expansion of the universe to be assessed (and providing the shocking recent evidence that the universal expansion is accelerating). However, the basic mechanisms and fundamental physics behind the triggering of a SN still have many open questions. In a burgeoning new sub-field of plasma physics, intense lasers are being used to recreate small-scale laboratory versions of certain exploding SNe plasmas for more careful scrutiny. Bruce Remington of Livermore will describe these laser-based SN experiments and mention numerous other examples of "laboratory astrophysics." (XB21.02)

Wax Tectonics.

Eberhard Bodenschatz of Cornell will report on the use of wax sheets as a model for the movement of tectonic plates. Simulating in an afternoon what geologic forces took millions of years to do, Bodenschatz gets good agreement between his lab specimens and the actual patterns observed in oceanic rifts. (Session QC28.)

Physics in the Petroleum Industry.

R.L. Kleinberg of Schlumberger-Doll Research in Ridgefield, CT will describe how nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)*the basic technology used in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)*is now being used by oil companies to characterize hydrocarbon reservoirs on-site. Daniel Rothman of MIT will discuss the complex, beautiful structures and patterns of eroding landscapes; he will also discuss efforts to model the erosion process so that physicists can, in essence, go backward in time to infer the structure of sedimentary basins before the onset of erosion. Jim Black of Landmark Graphics Corporation in Colorado will discuss the latest advances in using seismic waves to construct 3-D images of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Nicholas Cernansky will describe ideas for scientists to improve the internal combustion engine in cars. (Session JC.08)

For more information contact Phillip Schewe, 301-209-3092, pschewe@aio.acp.org, or Ben Stein, 301-209-3091, bstein@aip.acp.org ,at the American Institute of Physics.

JLab Users Group Meeting, APS Centennial, March 22, 1999

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Updated July 13, 2004