Talk:SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Name
There is no reason for this article to be called Stanford Linear Accelerator... It would properly be called Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, I believe. The accelerator itself has never, to my knowledge, been called SLA. (It has been called SLC, for Stanford Linear Collider, in fact.) Any objections to me fixing this? -- SCZenz 17:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

You are in fact correct, be cautious there are external links to this page that will go nowhere. Scotty
 * Yes, there are a lot of links. I will not move anything until I have time to fix them all.  -- SCZenz 18:12, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Turned out to be easy... Stanford Linear Accelerator now redirects here, and there ended up not being any double redirects. -- SCZenz 18:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Professor Robert Hofstadter received the 1961 Physics Nobel for electron scattering diffraction studies performed at SLAC. That makes four Nobelists. My Flatley (talk) 23:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Er, SLAC was founded in 1962. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.79.228.48 (talk) 21:48, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

The mention of SLAC's role in the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was removed. See here. This fact was well-referenced, and is an important part of SLAC's history. Can anybody justify its removal? Josh Thompson (talk) 22:15, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

You da man! I'll keep a future eye out too, I know I had to change a few with SLAC, Thanks...Scotty

Klyston Gallery Longest building in the United States?
About being the longest buiding in the United States I know they say that and I've heard it as hearsay, but have you ever been to Dallas airport? Or any other large airport? I suspect when you run around these airport buildings they might just beat SLAC. Also please note, the Klystron gallary only goes from Sector Zero to Sector 30, stops short, near sector 30 guard shack, and the beamline continues on going into the switchyard where it continues on further. Just my two cents Scott 18:31, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * So far this is the best reference source I can find. Rather self-serving, but I'm still looking for independant and more recent confirmation. --Kgf0 22:42, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I found a longer building "in the world" but not in the U.S. - the coloss of Prora: At four and a half kilometres, Prora is the longest building in the world, I think. It was built in the 1930s and intended as a holiday camp for 20,000 aryan families under the Nazi Strength Through Joy programme. This never happened because the war broke out during which parts of the building were bombed. Between 1945 and 1990 the East German army took over the building and used it as a secret training base." Looks like SLAC has a lock on the U.S. record, though, AFAICT.  --Kgf0 22:57, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * FuzzyKeith?
 * Good job, but I still question when I have to walk around the Dallas airport! LOL Again, good job. Scott 23:20, 28 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I've visited SLAC. A tour guide (some graduate student or postdoc) told me that an airport in Hong Kong comes the closest to beating SLAC's record, but not quite. So SLAC is probably longer than any airport terminal. The Prora is a complex made of "eight housing blocks" according to the wikipedia article on it, so maybe it's not a continuous building.
 * Sorry, one more correction. I've done a little bit of googling and have found the longest buildings in the world: http://www.chinavista.com/travel/yongding/circular.jpg. -Danny :-D

The Picture of the Beamline is Not From SLAC!!!
I'm not sure who put the picture of that beamline in this article but it is not a picture of any SLAC Linear Accelerator structure. I might belong to SPEAR/SSRL experiments which are at the _end_ of the beamline past the beam switch yard, but that is not a picture of any structure in the 3km(2mi) above-ground Klystron Gallery nor is it a picture of any accelerating structure underground in the actual beamline underneath the klystron gallery. Since this is an encyclopedia, it is rather embarassing that we've got this inaccuracy. I am going to remove the picture right away and put a correct picture up. Astrobayes 12:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Article reorganization
As the tag indicates, the PEP-II and SSRL section is quite sloppy. Instead of just cleaning it up, we should replace the section with a "Projects" section and give each procject a subheading within. That way we can organize the section better and make room for more projects. Specifically it would allow us to add a section on the LCLS project which was only just begun in late 2005 and will be building its new facilities next summer.--WmRowan 18:24, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs substantial reorganization. There are many projects that are underway at SLAC. Having a paragraph on each will prove unwieldy. Is there a precedent somewhere for how it should be organized? Neutrinoless (talk) 23:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 10:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

First Z Event
The first Z event occurred early in the morning on Tuesday, 11Apr89, and was discovered by graduate student Barrett D. Milliken the following morning (12Apr89) while he was going over data from the Mark II Particle Detector. So the current text needs help: "The first Z event was recorded on April 12, 1989 by the Mark II detector.(10)" The associated reference 10 is a nice on-line document and no one doubts Roger Erickson's long association with the Stanford Linear Collider. He also kept a log, early on BitNET, and entries from this are now on the Internet as reference (10). Erickson is noting the discovery of another scientist ("A scientist sifting through data recorded by the MARK-II detector found the evidence for the particle" as the bottom-page text states). So let's give the hard-toiling grad students of the science world credit by mentioning Barrett D Milliken and citing John R. Rees, The Stanford Linear Collider, Scientific American 1989, 261:4 (October), pp. 36-43 as the reference. Rees led the construction of the SLC.

I or others can do a Wiki edit based on this info from Rees, who writes,"Early in the morning of Tuesday, April 11 [1989], ... my colleagues on the night shift started home. Minutes before, unknown to any of us at the time, a surge of energy had suddenly pulsed through the three-story-high, 1,800-ton hulk of iron that forms the shell of the Mark II detector.  ... It was not until the following morning that Barrett Milliken, a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, noticed something unusual as he was poring over computer data stored from the previous day.  Two spindly jets of particles ... struck the detector, depositing some 65 billion electron volts of energy.  The brief pulse, Milliken realized, showed the unmistakable features of a Z0 -- a particle that 'carries' the weak nuclear force, one of the fundamental forces of nature.  By noon, the news had flashed around the world: we at SLAC had finally reached the goal that had eluded us for almost a year." I don't know what's best or enough for the article, but at least we're closer to what actually happened. Jerry-va (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Since the time zone isn't given, it seems to me to be close enough. Gah4 (talk) 01:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Since the time zone isn't given, it seems to me to be close enough. Gah4 (talk) 01:33, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

FACET and LCLS
The article should mention why the linac was re-purposed. Energy range no longer needed? Non-linacs better? Other linacs with newer equipment better?72.0.146.38 (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

current
An important part of SLAC is (was) not only the beam energy, but also the beam current. I have a reference for the original 20GeV SLAC having a beam current of 30μA. (For those who don't multiply fast, that is 600kW.) I am not sure about the later current. Gah4 (talk) 08:18, 16 December 2021 (UTC)