Madeleine O’Keefe is a writer in the Fermilab Office of Communication.
Catanzano began bringing science into her poetry after exploring poetry as a “philosophical investigation,” a step that she says drew her into thinking about how poems negotiate time. That brought Catanzano to physics and Albert Einstein’s theories of special relativity and general relativity.
When observed parameters seem like they must be finely tuned to fit a theory, some physicists accept it as coincidence. Others want to keep digging.
Imagine a particle. What comes to mind? If you aren’t a theoretical particle physicist, chances are you picture a tiny ball, bobbing in space. But that’s not quite correct. One way to prove it: Try to imagine that tiny ball as a particle with no mass. If a particle has no mass, how can it exist?
A lot of people say they would like to travel to Mars, but Zoe Townsend doesn’t just talk the talk. As a mechanical engineer at CERN, she knows the importance of putting ideas to the test. To see if she could actually handle the unique challenges posed by living and doing science on another planet, Townsend spent 12 days on a simulated Mars mission in the deserts of Utah.