Sandia has served for more than 50 years as one of the major national defense R&D labs, starting in 1945 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, as part of the Manhattan Project, which built the first nuclear weapons. AT&T began managing Sandia in 1949 after President Harry Truman offered the company "an opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest." In 1993, Lockheed Martin (then Martin Marietta) assumed
management of the Labs. Today Sandia has two primary facilities, one in Albuquerque and one in Livermore, California. Sandia employs about 7,450 people and manage about $1.4 billion of work per year. Sandia is funded primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy to design all of the non-nuclear components of the nation's nuclear weapons. Sandia also works closely with many U.S. government and industry groups to make contributions to preserve the nation's security. We constantly explore new opportunities to team with government, industry, and university partners in this mission. Sandia pursues "science and engineering with the mission in mind" finding solutions to the nation's most challenging problems.

SLAC is one of the world s leading research laboratories. Established in 1962, it is located at Stanford University in Menlo Park, CA. Our mission is to design, construct and operate state-of-the-art electron accelerators and related experimental facilities for use in high-energy physics and synchrotron radiation research.

The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, a division of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy. SSRL is a National User Facility which provides synchrotron radiation, a name given to x-rays or light produced by electrons circulating in a storage ring at nearly the speed of light. These extremely bright x-rays can be used to investigate various forms of matter ranging from objects of atomic and molecular size to man-made materials with unusual properties. The obtained information and knowledge is of great value to society, with impact in areas such as the environment, future technologies, health, and education.

Everything you could ever want to know about Stephen Hawking . . . Well, almost! If you have ever wanted to know about the man who wrote the all-time best seller 'A Brief History of Time', and more recently the book that is still topping charts all over the world 'The Universe in a Nutshell' then this is an excellent place to start. These pages have been written so that you can learn more about not only Stephen, but also his work. Would you like to email Professor Hawking? See 'contact information' in the 'Information' section.

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) is taking data that has provided revolutionary insight into the properties of neutrinos and the core of the sun. The detector, shown in the artist's conception below, was built 6800 feet under ground, in INCO's Creighton mine near Sudbury, Ontario. SNO is a heavy-water Cherenkov detector that is designed to detect neutrinos produced by fusion reactions in the sun. It uses 1000 tonnes of heavy water, on loan from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), contained in a 12 meter diameter acrylic vessel. Neutrinos react with the heavy water (D2O) to produce flashes of light called Cherenkov radiation. This light is then detected by an array of 9600 photomultiplier tubes mounted on a geodesic support structure surrounding the heavy water vessel. The detector is immersed in light (normal) water within a 30 meter barrel-shaped cavity (the size of a 10 story building!) excavated from Norite rock. Located in the deepest part of the mine, the overburden of rock shields the detector from cosmic rays. The detector laboratory is extremely clean to reduce background signals from radioactive elements present in the mine dust which would otherwise hide the very weak signal from neutrinos.

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration is committed to studying high energy particle collisions at the worlds highest energy particle accelerator. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.

NSLS-II is a proposed new state-of-the-art medium energy storage ring designed to deliver world leading brightness and flux with top-off operation for constant output. The facility will be able to produce x-rays up to 10,000 times brighter than those produced at the NSLS today. Brookhaven proposes that the design and engineering of the new light source will begin in 2005, construction in 2008, and operations in 2012. The superlative character and combination of capabilities will have broad impact on a wide range of disciplines and scientific initiatives in the coming decades, including new studies of small crystals in structural biology, a wide range of nanometer-resolution probes for nanoscience, coherent imaging of the structure and dynamics of disordered materials, greatly increased applicability of inelastic x-ray scattering, and properties of materials under extreme conditions.

So what is string theory? For that matter, what the heck are elementary particles? If this all sounds totally confusing, try this section first. Includes pages on mathematics, cosmology, black holes, gravity, theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and relativity.

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) is funded by the Office of Science for the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) with strong support from the City of Newport News, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the United States Congress. As a user facility for scientists worldwide, its primary mission is to conduct basic research of the atoms nucleus at the quark level. With industry and university partners, it has a derivative mission as well: applied research for using the Free-Electron Lasers based on technology the laboratory developed to conduct its physics experiments. As a center for both basic and applied research, Jefferson Lab also reaches out to help educate the next generation in science and technology. Jefferson Lab is managed for the DoE by the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA) Inc., a consortium of universities in the Southeast.

The Department of Energy's overarching mission is to advance the national, economic and energy security of the United States; to promote scientific and technological innovation in support of that mission; and to ensure the environmental cleanup of the national nuclear weapons complex. DOE Home. National security. Energy sources. Energy efficiency. Environment. Energy prices and trends. Science and technology. Health. Safety and security. Doing business with DOE. DOE careers. Competitive sourcing. Consumers. Researchers. Teachers and students. Kids. The Department of Energy is one of the largest sponsors of basic and applied research and development in theUnited States. DOE provides funding and support to researchers in academia, other government agencies, non-profit institutions, and industry.

The World Year of Physics 2005 plans to bring the excitement of physics to the public and inspire a new generation of scientists. Timed to coincide with the centennial celebration of Albert Einstein's "miraculous year," the World Year of Physics will be coming to YOU before you know it.