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Tag Archives: particle physics
Mascheroni (Ph.D., ’68) indicted in conspiracy case
UC Berkeley graduates make the news frequently, but you won’t see the following story in your alumni magazine. In September of 1968, Dr. Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni received his graduate degree in Physics; in September 2010, he received an indictment from the US government for 22 counts of various flavors of conspiracy and fraud. His wife, Marjorie, is also a Cal alum (B.A. in Fine Art) and is included as a defendant in the case.
As with the best legal dramas, the two sides of this story are drastically different.
A heroic stand against the evils of particle acceleration
It looks like the famous case between Walter Wagner and the US government has been dismissed once again, after Wagner appealed a previous court decision. Wagner has spent a good amount of time trying to shut down the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) because he believes it will destroy humanity. These apocalyptic theories about the LHC are nothing new, but Wagner is certainly one of its most active opponents.
I wonder what Mr. Wagner thinks the US can do to shut off an international operation located in Europe (headquartered in Geneva). I’m sure Obama can just go over there and press the power button on the LHC, because the US can do whatever it wants, right?
A showdown in Nature between Chu and Cohen-Tannoudji
The argument stems from the interferometry work published in Nature earlier this year:
Müller H, Peters A, & Chu S (2010). A precision measurement of the gravitational redshift by the interference of matter waves. Nature, 463 (7283), 926-9 PMID: 20164925
Cohen-Tannoudji says, “Wrong.”