Acronyms and Definitions

*Term*	*Definition*
3D	Three dimensional, as in 3D graphics presenting a separate stereoscopic view for each eye of the user.
AEC	Atomic Energy Commission. The US government agency which first funded major projects in high energy physics and which was the predecessor to ERDA and the Department of Energy.
ALEPH	A large solenoid magnet and time projection chamber for the LEP collider at CERN used since about 1988 with electron-positron collisions to study Z⁰ and W^± bosons.
ALICE	A detector planned for the LHC collider at CERN and planned for operation about 2005, to be used for the study of ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions, usually between lead nuclei.
Argonne	Argonne National Laboratory, one of the large DOE national laboratories, located south of Chicago and east of Fermilab.
ATLAS	A detector planned for the LHC collider at CERN and planned for operation about 2005, to be used for the study of proton-proton collisions.
axion	A hypothetical pseudo-scalar particle that is considered a possible source of dark matter (see below) in the universe. The axion, if it existed, would have a very small mass, would not interact with normal matter, and might be converted to a photon in the presence of a very strong magnetic field.
BBC	British Broadcasting Corporation.
Bevalac	An early high energy synchrotron accelerator constructed in the 1950s at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and used to discover the antiproton. Closed in 1992.
Bridge	A three-dimensional wormhole, usually connecting separated bubble universes, in the terminology of the Makers.
Bridgehead	One end of a wormhole, i.e., a wormhole mouth, in the terminology of the Makers. Note that a Bridgehead may be meters across, or it may be so small as to resemble a fundamental particle.
Brookhaven	Brookhaven National Laboratory (or BNL), one of the large DOE national laboratories, located on Long Island East of New York City at the site of WWI Camp Yappahank, an army training base.
Bubble	Maker terminology for Bubble Universe (see next entry)
Bubble Universe	One of a number of completely isolated sub-universes, evolved during the Big Bang in separate nucleation events leading to exponential expansion, as implied by the inflation scenario of the Standard Model of cosmology.
CDF	Collider Detector at Fermilab, one of the two large detectors constructed at Fermilab in the 1990s to use the colliding proton-antiproton beams produced by the machine. The top quark was discovered with this detector in 1993-94.
center of mass system	The inertial reference frame in which the overall momentum of a system of particles is zero. Used in relativistic kinematics. Sometimes called the CM system.
CERN	*Centre Europénne pour la Recherche Nucléaire,* the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the major European center for research in high energy physics, funded by 19 member nations and located just west of Geneva, Switzerland, spanning the Swiss-French border and sprawling over the French countryside. Operates the large SPS and LEP accelerators and is presently constructing the LHC accelerator in the LEP tunnel.
CIA	U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
Clifford algebra	An unorthodox approach to the algebra of complex numbers and matrices that is currently viewed as a "growth area" in theoretical physics. There are some theorists who feel that the formalisms of relativity and relativistic quantum mechanics become simpler and more transparent when re-formulated using Clifford algebra. In the novel, the Makers' mathematics resembles Clifford algebra.
CMS	Compact Muon Solenoid, a detector planned for the LHC collider at CERN and expected to operate about 2005, to be used for the study of proton-proton collisions.
collider	A relatively new type of high energy physics accelerator which produces two accelerated particle beams that are brought into head-on collision. This allows all of the available energy to be used in the collision, rather than losing a large fraction of it to motion of the center of mass of the system, as is the case with a relativistic particle beam strikes a target at rest.
Cornell	Cornell University, located in Ithica, NY, operates a high energy electron accelerator facility funded by the US National Science Foundation.
cosmic background	Radiation produced 100,000 years after the initial Big Bang when the universe cooled enough for free protons and electrons to combine to form neutral hydrogen atoms. At this point the universe became optically transparent and a "flash" of radiation with a broad "black body" frequency spectrum was liberated. Due to the progressive red-shift as the universe expands, this radiation now has a characteristic temperature of 2.7 K.
Cosmotron	An early high energy synchrotron accelerator constructed in the 1950s at Brookhaven National Laboratory and used in early high energy physics experiments. Closed in the late 1960's.
D.C.	District of Columbia, US Capitol
D/FW	Abbreviation for the Dallas Ft. Worth International Airport.
D0	D-Zero is one of the two large detectors constructed at Fermilab in the 1990s to use the colliding proton-antiproton beams produced by the machine. The D0 experiment provided supporting evidence for the discovery of the top quark.
dark matter	Evidence from a number of sources indicates that the universe has considerable mass which cannot be accounted for as visible stars or even using the best estimates of the total amount of normal matter. This excess mass is attributed to "dark matter", and the identification of dark matter is a major unsolved problem of contemporary astrophysics.
DELPHI	One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
dewar	A vessel for holding cryogenic liquids, constructed like a large thermos bottle.
DNA	Deoxyribonucleic acid. The basic read-only library containing a sequence of instructions for the construction of proteins residing in all cells.
DOE	United States Department of Energy.
EA-3	East-Area Experiment 3. A fictitious designation for one of the smaller experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel.
EA-4	East-Area Experiment 4. A fictitious designation for one of the smaller experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel.
Einstein-Rosen bridge	A three-dimensional "wormhole"; a topological defect in space-time which provides a shortcut between one region of space-time and another; a little-understood solution to Einstein's equations of general relativity.
element numbers	The alien Tunnel Maker refers to the chemical elements by their atomic number. Those mentioned are: 1=hydrogen, 4=beryllium, 6=carbon, 8=oxygen, 10=neon, 14=silicon, 26=iron, 29=copper, 82=lead, and 92=uranium. All of these are elements that might be found in a high-energy physics detector.
Energy Doubler	Short for the Energy Doubler-Saver, the name given to the Fermilab conversion of their synchrotron from "warm" to superconducting magnets in the late 1980s.
EPA	United States Environmental Protection Agency.
ERDA	United States Energy Research and Development Agency, a predecessor of the present Department of Energy.
FBI	Federal Bureau of Investigation, domestic investigative office of the U. S. Department of Justice.
Fermilab	One of two major high energy accelerator facilities in the Unites States (the other is SLAC) operated by the U. S. Department of Energy. It is located near Batavia, Illinois, south of Chicago.
FET	Field-effect transistor, a voltage controlled solid-state electronic device that regulates the flow of electrical current and is a principal component of integrated-circuit electronics.
FSU	Florida State University located in Tallahassee, Florida.
GEM	One of the two major collider detectors planned for the SSC Laboratory. The acronym stands for gamma-rays, electrons, and muons, the three particles the detector was designed to detect. Canceled along with the SSC accelerator project in late 1993.
general relativity	The "standard model" theory of gravitation developed by Albert Einstein about 1916. It describes the actions of gravity in terms of the curvature and geometry of space-time.
GeV	Giga-electron volts or 109 electron volts. This the standard unit of energy used in particle physics. The mass-energy of a proton at rest is about 0.94 GeV.
GPS	Global positioning system, a portable electronic device which uses signals from a system of navigation satellites to determine the three-dimensional location and changes in location of the device.
graduate student	A university student who has completed a Bachelor's degree and is working on an advanced degree, usually a PhD degree.
Isabelle	A DOE-funded proton-proton collider that was under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory when the project was canceled in 1983 due to problems in superconducting magnet construction.
jets	Clusters of energetic particles observed to emerge from collisions of high-energy particles. Attributed to the emission of a high-energy quark or gluon which, due to color-string breaking gives rise to a group of correlated particles.
KIRO-TV	A television station in the Seattle area broadcasting on channel 4 and affiliated with the ABC network.
L3	One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
LANL	See Los Alamos.
LBL	Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, a large DOE funded national laboratory founded by E. O. Lawrence and located in Berkeley, California adjacent to the University of California campus. In 1995 the name of the laboratory was changed to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the acronym changed to LBNL.
LBNL	See LBL
LEM	Leptons and Electro-Magnetic interactions detector, the fictitious designation for one of the large collider experiments of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory according to this novel. LEM bears some resemblance to the planned GEM detector of the SSC.
LEP	Large Electron-Positron collider, an accelerator facility that has been in operation at CERN since about 1988.
Lexis	A data base service used by the legal profession.
LHC	Large Hadronic Collider, an accelerator facility to be constructed in the LEP tunnel at CERN and that will collide protons at an energy of 8 TeV. The completion of the LHC was postponed when the pressure from the SSC project was removed, and the facility is now scheduled for initial operation about 2005.
Livermore	Short for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or LLNL, one of the two DOE-funded weapons laboratories located at Livermore, California about 50 miles east of San-Francisco.
Los Alamos	Short for the Los Alamos National Laboratory or LANL, one of the two DOE-funded weapons laboratories. LANL is located atop a mesa at Los Alamos, New Mexico about 50 miles northwest of Santa Fe.
LLNL	See Livermore.
Makers	A race of intelligent aliens evolved from amphibians which has a high technology civilization approximately a thousand years in advance of ours.
mass-energy	Physicists tend to consider mass and energy to be equivalent, using Einstein's relation E=mc², and the masses of fundamental particles are often quoted in energy units. The mass-energy of a stationary particle is its rest mass, expressed in energy units. The mass-energy of a moving particle is the sum of this and its kinetic energy.
Mathematica	A symbolic algebra and mathematics program widely used by theoretical physicists and produced by Wolfram Research, Inc., Urbana, IL.
MIT	Massachusetts Institute of Technology located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
mr/h	Abbreviation for milli-rem per hour, a measure of ionizing radiation dosage. Natural background radiation in our environment exposes the average person to radiation of about 300 mr per year.
MRI	Magnetic resonance imaging; originally called "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" until the term "nuclear" was dropped by the medical profession to avoid alarming patients.
nanometer	A length of 10^-9 meters, approximately the size of a molecule.
NASA	National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the federal space bureaucracy.
Nexis	A data base service used by the legal profession.
NSA	National Security Agency, the federal intelligence agency charged with the responsibility of intercepting messages and breaking codes. A very secret organization whose acronym is sometimes interpreted to mean "No Such Agency."
NSF	National Science Foundation, the second most important funding agency (after the DOE) for the funding of particle physics research.
Oak Ridge	Oak Ridge National Laboratory (or ORNL), a large DOE funded national laboratory constructed during WWII for separation of uranium-235 for the Manhattan Project and located in the hills of Tennessee about 70 miles from Knoxville.
OPAL	One of the four large collider detectors of the CERN LEP facility.
ORNL	See Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Ph.D.	Doctor of Philosophy, the degree earned by most practicing physicists.
Planck mass	The mass, set by the gravitational constant, of the smallest possible black hole. It is the heaviest possible mass for a fundamental particle. The value of a Planck mass is about 10²³ eV or about 0.6 micrograms.
postdoc	A postdoctoral fellow. This is the usual job title of a physicist who has received his PhD and wishes to go on in physics research. It is a "journeyman physicist" position characterized by relatively low pay and long working hours.
QCD	Quantum chromodynamics, the theory of quarks, gluons, and the color force. A key element of the standard model of particle physics.
quantum gravity	A unified theory, not yet formulated but widely sought-after by theoretical physicists, that combines gravitation and quantum mechanics in a single mathematical framework. As one prominent physicst has observed, "the only thing we presently know about quantum gravity is its name."
rest mass	The mass that a particle has at rest, as opposed to the larger mass it would have when in motion due to relativistic mass increase.
Reynald toroid	A fictional device described in the novel which employs spin-alignment and high magnetic fields in a torus-shaped alloy for compact energy storage.
RF	Radio frequency, usually referring to radio waves or electrical oscillations at frequencies between roughly 100 kHz and 500 MHz.
RNA	Ribonucleic Acid, the string of nucleic acids transcribed from DNA and containing a sequence of instructions for the construction of proteins residing in all cells.
SDC	One of the two major collider detectors planned for the SSC Laboratory. The acronym stands for Solenoidal Detector Collaboration. Canceled along with the accelerator project in 1993.
SETI	The search for extraterrestrial intelligence, a series of searches carried out mainly by radio astronomers seeking directed signals or byproduct radio waves produced by a civilization of intelligent life forms inhabiting another star system. No evidence of such signals has ever been deteted.
SLAC	Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, one of two major high energy accelerator facilities in the Unites States operated by the U. S. Department of Energy. It is located near Palo Alto, California just south of San Francisco.
SLC	SLAC Linear Collider, an experiment designed to use one-pass colliding beams from the SLAC linear accelerator in an attempt (which failed) to do definitive measurements of the Z and W bosons before the LEP machine at CERN and its detectors came into operation.
spin battery	See Reynald toroid.
SSC	Superconducting Super Collider, a double synchrotron designed to produce a head-on collisions between two protons, each accelerated to an energy of 20 TeV. The SSC project was canceled in 1993 by the U. S. Congress.
Tesla	A standard international unit used to measure magnetic fields. One Tesla is about as large a magnetic field as can be obtained from normal "warm" magnets, but super-conducting magnets can do more. The SSC was designed to use superconducting 6 Tesla magnets, and the LHC magnets are designed to produce fields of up to 9 Tesla.
TeV	Tera-electron volts or 10¹² electron volts. This another standard unit of energy used in particle physics. The mass-energy of a top quark is about 0.18 TeV.
Tiger Teams	Groups of safety specialists and military retirees dispatched by Energy Secretary Admiral James Watkins to review the safety procedures and problems of the DOE-funded national laboratories in the early 1990s. Commonly referred to at the national laboratories as the Safety SS.
Tombigbee Waterway	A water project of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in Alabama and Mississippi aimed at dredging and linking the Tombigbee and Tennessee Rivers so as to producing a navigable waterway leading to the Gulf of Mexico. One of the largest congressional pork-barrel projects of the 1980s.
torsion balance	A delicate but precise scientific instrument that measures minute forces and torques by observing small deflections of torsion springs or fibers.
URA	Universities Research Association, a nonprofit management bureaucracy representing the group of universities. The URA operates Fermilab, Brookhaven, and also operated the SSC laboratory until its closure in 1993. The URA was blamed by some DOE officials for loose oversight contributing to the SSC project's cancellation.
vertex	A point from which many particles emerge, for example the point at which a proton-proton collision occurs in a collider.
VLSI	Very Large Scale Integration, the technology which permits placing complete computers or other elaborate electronic circuits on a single chip of silicon.
VR	Virtual Reality, the technique of sensing head position and feeding an appropriate simulation of reality to each eye and ear separately, to create the very realistic illusion of a reality which in fact exists only within a computer.
W^±	The charged mediating particles of the weak interaction, with mass energies of 80.6 GeV. Predicted by the standard model of particle physics and discovered at CERN in the early 1980s.
Z⁰	The neutral mediating particle of the weak interaction, with a mass energy of 91.161 GeV. Predicted by the standard model of particle physics and discovered at CERN in the early 1980s.