Todd Kempel Profile

From the Iowa State Daily: Todd Kempel Profile

By Amelia Johnson, amelia.johnson@iowastatedaily.com TownNews.com

The J/Psi meson is a bit of an unusual thing in the physics world and understanding how it works could influence physics.

“It’s a very important piece for understanding a very complicated puzzle,” said John Lajoie, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy.

“We want to figure out how they are created, and how they are bound. If we can figure that out, we can start to understand how other particles, like the proton, are bound,” said Todd Kempel, an alumni ISU Ph.D. student.

Kempel, who graduated in 2010, won the 2011 Brookhaven National Laboratory RHIC and AGS Thesis Award for his thesis paper, “Understanding the J/Psi meson Production Mechanism at PHENIX.”

For his work, Kempel received an award of $3,000.

“When I started my Ph.D. program, I had no idea what I wanted to do in physics,” Kempel said.

While in the Ph. D. program, Kempel joined the Experimental Nuclear Physics group. This group worked with the RHIC experiment. PHENIX, or Pioneering High Energy Ion Experiment, is the experiment and RHIC is the accelerator. The ISU Experimental Nuclear Physics group is still a major player in PHENIX.

Within that group, Kempel worked with Lajoie, his eventual thesis adviser, on making, developing, designing and testing prototype trigger modules for the experiment.

“He did the hardware design, the software design in the hardware, the whole kit and kaboodle,” Lajoie said.

It was not until later, after hearing much about it, that Kempel decided to work in nuclear physics and eventually to study the J/psi meson.

“The problem itself was interesting. People have been trying to solve this problem since the ‘70s. There still wasn’t any satisfactory answer,” Kempel said.

However, the award wasn’t the goal of Kempel’s work. “It was a bit of an afterthought. My adviser suggested entering the program; so I did,” he said.

“It was a fantastic physics result. It was a solid piece of science. The way he wrote the thesis, everything from his style of writing to the presentation of the material was very clear, very complete. Good science, good thesis, there was no way he could lose,” Lajoie said.

Although Kempel worked in nuclear physics and won an award for his work, he has since moved out of that field. He now works with software, specifically software that controls electronic hardware, something that he also spent a great deal of time on at ISU.

Asked which work Kempel preferred, he said “I liked being able to switch between the two.”

Booklist: A Nuclear Family Vacation

A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry, by Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge. 2008. Bloombsbury.

Description

Two Washington, D.C., defense reporters do for nukes what Sarah Vowell did for presidential assassinations in this fascinating, kaleidoscopic portrait of nuclear weaponry.

In A Nuclear Family Vacation, husband-and-wife journalists Sharon Weinberger and Nathan Hodge hit the open road to explore the secretive world of nuclear weaponry. Along the way, they answer the questions most nuclear tourists don’t get to ask: Are nuclear weapons still on hair-trigger alert? Is there such a thing as a suitcase nuke? Is Iran really building the bomb? Together, Weinberger and Hodge visit top-secret locations like the Isfahan Uranium Conversion Facility in Iran, the United States’ Kwajalein military outpost in the Marshall Islands, the Y-12 facility in Tennessee, and “Site R,” a bunker known as the “Underground Pentagon,” rumored to be Vice President Cheney’s personal “undisclosed location” of choice. Their atomic road trip reveals plans to revitalize the U.S. nuclear arsenal, even as the United States pushes other countries to disarm. Weaving together travel writing with world-changing events, A Nuclear Family Vacation unearths unknown—and often quite entertaining—stories about the nuclear world.

Small Particles Raise Big Questions About Foundations of Physics

From PBS Newshour: Small Particles Raise Big Questions About Foundations of Physics
"May the book bring some one a few happy hours of suggestive thought!!" Albert Einstein wrote that in 1916 at the end of the preface to his groundbreaking book, "Relativity: The Special and General Theory." Scientists around the globe have since spent countless hours -- some perhaps not so happy -- thinking about Einstein's work and the ideas he presented, including the equation E=mc^2, have since served as the bedrock for modern physics.

But the news Friday that a group of European physicists may have discovered that subatomic particles traveled faster than the speed of light (the constant c in Einstein's equation) could call our fundamental understanding of the universe into question.


"The expected reaction is a healthy skepticism that a result this revolutionary can be happening," said Rob Plunkett, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.

Listen to a conversation with Rob Plunkett:



Researchers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, published a paper stating an experiment they conducted demonstrated neutrinos traveled faster than the speed of light.

"Neutrinos are among the weirdest denizens of the weird quantum subatomic world," wrote Dennis Overbee in The New York Times. They are tiny particles believed to travel at the speed of light and are "electrically neutral," meaning they can be pass through matter "like wind through a screen door" or "like a bullet passing through a bank of fog." They come in three varieties, but can change among the three as they travel, something the CERN experiment was intended to detect.

The project, know as Opera, for Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus, sent neutrinos from a particle accelerator at CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland, racing some 450 miles to a cavern in Gran Sasso, Italy. The neutrinos arrived roughly 60 nanoseconds faster than light.

"The OPERA measurement is at odds with well-established laws of nature, though science frequently progresses by overthrowing the established paradigms," CERN said in a statement. "For this reason, many searches have been made for deviations from Einstein's theory of relativity, so far not finding any such evidence. The strong constraints arising from these observations makes an interpretation of the OPERA measurement in terms of modification of Einstein's theory unlikely, and give further strong reason to seek new independent measurements."

"It is rather hard to imagine what it means if it is true," said Jenny Thomas, a professor at the University College of London who is now working at the Fermi Lab. "The speed of light being a constant and the maximum speed possible is one of the cornerstones of physics, so it would be much more likely it is some mundane explanation to do with the experiment."

In 2007, scientists at the Fermi Lab also registered neutrinos traveling faster than light, but the difference was within the error rate of the experiment. Their equipment and methods were not as precise then as they are now at CERN. But the scientists at Fermi are now going to try again and see if they can duplicate CERN's findings.

"I believe it will be months and years of happy investigative thought and quite a bit of head banging as well," Plunkett said. "As theoretical physicists try to understand how they would deal with such a thing and we being to work out the details of how to make a definitive yes, no check."

Books to Read: Quantum Man, by Lawrence M. Krauss

Add this book to your To Read List:

Quantum Man: RIchard Feynman's Life in Science, by Lawrence M. Krauss, 2011, WW Norton

Description
Born in Far Rockaway, Queens, Richard Feynman became one of the twentieth century's dominant minds in physics, contributing work that reshaped our understanding of the fundamental forces in nature.

Lawrence M. Krauss's Quantum Man captures the life and science of this enigmatic figure, who would go from running a small radio repair business as a child to working on the Manhattan Project to unraveling the nature of quantum mechanics.

Krauss captured Feynman's relentlessly inquisitive spirit and his near absolute refusal to abide by whay was fashionable or expected; in science and in life.

Along the journey readers encounter some of the great minds of the twentieth century, including Paul Dirac, John von Neumann, and Robert Oppenheimer. With great sensitivity to the historical context in which FEynman worked, Krauss offers miniature physics lessons associated with each of Feynman's discoveries even as he points out the mercurial genius of much of the scientist's work.

Ultimately, as seen in this insightful biography, Feynman's life provides a perspective on the key developments in physics during the second half of the century and many of the puzzles posed by his insights that remain unsolved to this day.

An accessible reflection on the issues that drive physics today, Quantum Man is the story of man who was willing to break all the rules in order to tame a theory that broke all the rules.

The mysterious disappearance (or not) of the physicist who discovered neutrons (or not).

From io9: The mysterious disappearance (or not) of the physicist who discovered neutrons (or not).
In 1938, Ettore Majorana boarded a ship to Naples, and never got off at the other end. Since then people have been debating what happened to the physicist, and whether or not he had a larger part in the history of physics than he's given credit for.

Enrico Fermi, the brilliant physicist who developed the first nuclear reactor and won the Nobel prize for his explorations of radioactivity, might possibly have been eclipsed in his own time by one of his colleagues. Five years younger than Fermi, Ettore Majorana was a rising star in physics when he disappeared in 1938, at the age of 32. Rumors have been swirling around his disappearance since the moment he failed to step off the boat that he was spotted boarding in March - a boat set for Naples.

It's no surprise that Majorana was the center of such a mystery. During his life, he was famously enigmatic. There is evidence that he came up with the proof of the neutron before the official confirmation by James Chadwick, but did not publish his findings. Majorana, it is said, was sure that someone else would discover them and unlike almost everyone else in his profession he hated the spotlight. Fermi, though only slightly older, took it upon himself to mentor Majorana, including hounding him into publishing his paper about some particles, like photons, being their own antiparticles. This brought attention to Majorana; attention he responded to by working in near-complete isolation for years.

Majorana's disappearance caused a sensation and a search at the time, but there have been no real clues turned up since he was first reported missing. Majorana was shy, isolated, and occasionally depressed, and some people worried that he had committed suicide. Although it's possible, his family pointed out that he withdrew his entire savings account shortly before he took the trip. He was also, according to multiple sources, a devout Catholic, making suicide less likely for religious reasons. Some people say he left physics for the quiet life of the Church. Others believe that he had some ties to the mafia and was running from them - or murdered by them. The overall timing of the event is also suspicious. Europe, in 1938, was at the edge of a precipice. Physicists the world over would soon be engaged in one war effort or another. It's possible that Majorana was not interested in becoming part of that effort. Although at the time of his disappearance, no one had conceived that an atomic bomb was possible, some biographers have posited that Majorana was quietly a few steps ahead of everyone and wanted no part of what was to come.

Even the single concrete detail in the case, that Majorana stepped onto a certain boat on a certain day in March, is in dispute. Some believe he deliberately placed a decoy on the boat. Others think the boat trip was simply a fabrication of those he left behind, who naturally wanted some evidence to cling to.

Fermi, when discussing Majorana's disappearance, famously said, "Ettore was too intelligent. If he has decided to disappear, no-one will be able to find him." It looks like he may have been right.

Israel Upgrades Links With European Nuclear Lab

From ABC News: Israel Upgrades Links With European Nuclear Lab
Israel has signed an agreement to upgrade links with the European nuclear physics laboratory CERN, famed for its giant atomic collider beneath the Swiss-French border.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research said Friday it has admitted the country as an associate member pending ratification by Israel's parliament.

Israeli scientists have long collaborated with CERN, including on an experiment searching for the Higgs particle inside the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider. If proven to exist, the Higgs particle could explain why matter has mass.

The Geneva-based organization has 20 members and CERN says Israel can become the first non-European member after a minimum two-year waiting period. The U.S. has observer status at CERN, one step below associate membership.

As Iran edges closer to nukes

From the Politico, an opinion piece: As Iran edges closer to nukes

One country is likely to get increasing attention during the presidential campaign: Iran. So it is important to frame the debate about Iran correctly — without hyping or underestimating the possibility it will get nuclear weapons in the near future.

Compared to four countries that have developed nuclear weapons outside international norms — Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — Iran has not exactly been sprinting toward a bomb. Yet the Iranian program – which Washington helped start in 1957 – is finally getting close to providing the wherewithal to make nuclear weapons


Iranian leaders insist that they don’t want such weapons — they are proscribed by Islam, they insist, and useless for waging war. Yet they have amassed ever greater quantities of enriched uranium — with no obvious near-term civilian use. Iran now has more than 4,500 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent U-235 and 70 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent U-235, according to the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That’s enough material, if further enriched, for four or five nuclear weapons.

In contrast to other nuclear outliers, Iran still skates within the boundaries of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The treaty legalized the arsenals of the five earliest nuclear states – the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain – and gave other signatories the right to develop peaceful nuclear power. Iran allows the IAEA to inspect its overt nuclear facilities. Most recently, it let inspectors see a heavy water production plant and heavy water reactor – which could eventually yield plutonium, another potential bomb fuel. Iran also allowed the U.N. watchdog to visit a facility for the production of advanced centrifuges that could more quickly convert uranium to bomb material.

But there are limits to Iranian cooperation. Tehran refuses to allow IAEA personnel to interview Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a nuclear physicist and officer in the Revolutionary Guards, who allegedly directed nuclear weapons research. Iran also won’t answer questions about alleged studies of nuclear warheads and means of initiating nuclear explosions.

Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director, says the last time there were “meaningful” talks with Iran about the apparent military dimensions of its program was in summer, 2008.

“The same group of guys who work with high explosives worked with neutron initiators,” Heinonen told me, for a new Atlantic Council report on the reliability of intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. http://www.acus.org/publication/how-reliable-intelligence-irans-nuclear-program

“When you take the high explosives, the neutron physics and the missile reentry vehicle, it looks like something to do with a nuclear weapon. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and has feet like a duck — it most likely is a duck.”

Will this duck ever take flight? Does Iran really want a bomb or just to keep the world guessing about its intentions and capabilities?

The current state of nuclear ambiguity suits Iranian leaders for strategic and psychological reasons. Iranian leaders clearly enjoy causing anxiety to the United States and other pillars of an international order that has largely spurned Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution. This is especially true of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, scheduled to attend the annual U.N. General Assembly next week — and again likely to infuriate many listeners with outrageous comments about 9-11 and Israel.


On a deeper strategic level, however, Iranian leaders see their nuclear program as providing prestige and deterrence against foreign invasion. With the recent regime-change experiences of near-nuclear states Iraq and Libya in mind, as well as the current troubles of nuclear wannabe Syria, Iran is unlikely to give up enriching uranium. But may stop short of testing a nuclear device.

The U.S. and its allies can help keep the lid on through a mix of policies — including better implementation of sanctions on nuclear-related materials, interdiction of these materials and continued sabotage of equipment and computer software. Iran’s cooperation with the IAEA has been spotty, but improved Western surveillance techniques unmasked in 2009 a secret enrichment facility burrowed into a mountain near Qom.


Iran’s unsettled domestic politics since its disputed presidential elections and mounting economic woes also provide fertile ground for recruiting scientists to reveal more nuclear secrets. More rigorous U.S. intelligence practices since the Iraq fiasco of 2003 give confidence that analysts are neither underestimating or exaggerating Iran’s progress.

Washington should also remain open to diplomacy, and seek to gain from the fact that Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Salehi, is an MIT-educated physicist, who has headed the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization and represented Iran at the IAEA. Diplomacy should test whether Iran would be willing to cap enrichment and accept more rigorous inspections — in return for civilian nuclear cooperation and sanctions relief.

To create a more conducive atmosphere for diplomatic solutions, the United States and other NPT-recognized nuclear powers must keep their own commitments to ban nuclear testing and accelerate nuclear disarmament. They should try harder to convince India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel to curb their programs, and press India and Pakistan to reach arms control agreements.

The goal for Washington and the international community should be to convince Iran that it can lose more than it gains from crossing the nuclear threshold – triggering an arms race with wealthier Arabs, for example, that sanctions-strapped Iran cannot win.

Nuclear weapons did not save the old Soviet Union and will not insure the survival of the Islamic Republic in a region undergoing massive political change. Only an Iranian government that genuinely addresses the needs and aspirations of its people can be confident of enduring.

Barbara Slavin is a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, former senior diplomatic reporter for USA Today and former Mideast correspondent for The Economist. She interviewed Muammar Qadhafi in 2000.