Beamtimes and Lifetimes

The World of High Energy Physicists

Sharon Traweek

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1992
• Print ISBN:
  9780674063488
  9780674063471
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674257177
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The unique breed of particle physicists constitutes a community of sophisticated mythmakers—explicators of the nature of matter who forever alter our views of space and time. But who are these people? What is their world really like? Sharon Traweek, a bold and original observer of culture, opens the door to this unusual domain and offers us a glimpse into the inner sanctum.

CHAPTER · 1

Touring the Site: Powerful Places in the Laboratory

Almost all of the high energy physics national laboratories in the United States, and many of those around the world, have lovely settings. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center rests unobtrusively in the scenic eastern foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, thirty miles south of San Francisco near Stanford University. During the winter rainy season, the rolling grasslands are a bright malachite green; gnarled California live oaks stand isolated, forming black veins in the grey skies and green savannah. Sharp air and fulminous clouds frame Mount Diablo, far across the San Francisco Bay. In the thick, dry sunlight of summer, slowly moving shadows from the great oaks trace small arcs in the still, golden grasses. The weather of this region alternates between a five-month-long winter of rain and a seven-month-long summer of sun. The accelerator at the laboratory operates about seven months of the year. Just as the ecology of alternating wet and dry seasons shapes the social and political institutions of many nonindustrial, nonurban peoples, the ecology of an alternating “on” and “off” accelerator shapes the social organization of the laboratory.¹

Several herds of cattle graze on the 480-acre site, and many other animals live there, secluded and protected in Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve and the Stanford Outdoor Primate Facility, where research is conducted on plants and animals in a controlled simulation of their natural habitats. The twenty-four-acre Stanford Outdoor Primate Facility (SOPF) was founded in 1974 by David Hamburg at Stanford University and Jane Goodall, who also founded the Gombe Stream Research Center in Tanzania, East Africa, where chimpanzees are studied in their natural habitat. Certain kinds of experimental studies cannot be conducted in fully natural settings; the controlled but varied environment at the SOPF suited the research conducted by the Laboratory of Stress and Conflict of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford School of Medicine.²

Particle physics research is also conducted in two settings: one uses the naturally occurring cosmic rays which are constantly bombarding the earth, and the other uses artificially accelerated particles. Like SOPF, SLAC offers greater control of research variables than any natural setting could provide.

Although the San Andreas earthquake fault runs visibly alongside the site about half a mile from the accelerator, the bedrock and earthmass of the site have been stable for ten to fifty million years. Measured to a depth of thirty feet over eighteen months, the maximum horizontal shift was a quarter-inch north to a quarter-inch south, and the total vertical movement was less than an eighth-inch.³ The stability of the site is necessary to assure the alignment of the accelerator.

Approaching the lab by car from Sand Hill Road, one is aware only of the bucolic landscape and a small, low grey concrete marker lettered in white: “STANFORD LINEAR ACCELERATOR CENTER: Operated for the United States Department of Energy.” No one at the lab calls it that; it is known there and elsewhere in the physics community as SLAC (pronounced “slack”). It is common in the high energy physics community to devise acronyms with humorous or mundane associations.⁴

For visitors turning at the sign, the first impression is of a small building large enough for two or three people. It is referred to as an information booth; it looks like a guardhouse because the middle-aged men who stand there watching the cars come and go wear uniforms and some occasionally execute sharp salutes, apparently for their own amusement. The men work for a private security firm that has a contract from the lab. Passersby who notice the guardhouse sometimes think that access to the lab is restricted. This impression could be dispelled if the administration chose—for example, by a sign on the booth indicating that the lab is open to the public and giving directions to the Public Information Office.

Some people who work at SLAC object to the quasi-military demeanor of the guards; others simply joke about the booth and the men in it, saying the whole display looks like a Swiss clock. The style of the guards offends the physicists because it reminds them of the gates at labs where “classified” (secret) research is done on behalf of the military. Secret work is distasteful to them because it is seen as “applied” research, in which ideas already established in “basic” or “pure” research are applied to less fundamental and challenging problems. They are proud of working at a lab where no classified work is conducted, because in their eyes basic research has much higher status.

The guards have various small movable wooden signs. On winter mornings they post the one that says “Your Lights Are ON.” Once a month they display “Bookmobile Here Today.” At night the sign reads “Stop Here 7 P.M. to 6 A.M.” During those hours it is necessary to show a lab identification badge and sign a roster before being allowed to enter the site. No one objects to the procedure; it is regarded as protecting the lab from theft, vandalism, and political terrorism.

Since two bombs exploded at the western end of the accelerator on December 7, 1971, causing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage, the administration of SLAC has been especially concerned with the security of the lab.⁵ The rule about registering at the booth dates from that incident; and the Klystron Gallery, which gives access to the accelerator, is now kept locked. With the bombing incident the lab’s relationship with the outside world became an explicit issue for the first time. No one was ever apprehended; speculation at the lab identified three possible groups that might have been willing to use violence against the institution. Whichever it was, they were seen as misguided and irrational in wishing to disrupt the important work of the lab; the feeling was that, whatever the validity of the grievances of the firebombers, the lab was an inappropriate target.

The first hypothesis was that the firebombing was the work of radical left-wing anti-Vietnam War activists who assumed that SLAC was engaged in classified weapons research. The physicists find annoying the association in the public mind between physics and weapons research.

Their second theory assumed the bombing must have been an “inside job,” their suspects being the people who were then trying to establish the first union at a government-financed research laboratory. They were later successful: the United Stanford Employees (USE) won the National Labor Relations Board-sponsored vote over the Teamsters. From the beginning USE leaders have been concentrated at SLAC—particularly among the technicians—and more widely dispersed on the Stanford campus as a whole. The senior physicists who manage the lab are said to have been outraged at the very idea of a union, which suggested that people could consider their work at the lab as a mere job. The physicists generally have been committed to being scientists since early adolescence, and their own training teaches them to regard physics as a calling, not an occupation. They assumed that everyone at the lab would share this same devotion to science and its institutions and were profoundly saddened and angered by the strike and picket lines called by the union in 1973. The lab has generally attracted a staff devoted both to SLAC and its work. They, as well as the physicists, are uncomfortable working with employees who seem not to share this commitment. It is assumed that those who do would not consider a strike against the lab, because it would be a strike against science.

The third hypothesis suggested that the bomb was the work of nearby residents. Many neighbors were frightened of radiation or possible explosions (harking back to the association of physics with weapons research). Others were known to be offended by the huge power lines that provide electricity for the lab: the lines pass through an affluent suburb many of whose residents affect the style of English gentry, including fox hunts. According to laboratory employees, Pete McCloskey, now a former congressman and then a local attorney, negotiated a settlement between the residents and the federal government concerning these power lines. The residents wanted the lines to be placed underground no matter what the expense, but Lyndon Johnson decided against this after his personal emissary, Laurance Rockefeller, informed him that this was not the current community standard. The compromise struck was to have the poles designed by a prestigious San Francisco architectural firm, Halprin Associates, and to keep them painted green. The physicists regarded all these concerns as silly, a sign of ignorance, and a confusion of priorities.

After these early conflicts with the community, the director established a Public Information Office to educate citizens and students about the work conducted at the lab through news releases and tours. The head of this office eventually became a popular city councilman. His demeanor and values are much closer to those of the local community than to those of the scientists at the lab. The citizens consider this man a representative of their point of view to the lab; at SLAC he is regarded as a delegate from the lab to the community. Through him each side feels comfortable communicating with the other.

All of the employees of the Public Information Office are Caucasian, like almost all of the audiences they address. The activities of this office indicate that SLAC sees its role in community-laboratory interactions as didactic. That is, disagreement with the lab’s policies is seen as a result of lack of information, which SLAC will supply.

By the rules of the government agency overseeing the laboratory, the Department of Energy (formerly the Atomic Energy Commission, then—at the time of this study—the Energy Research and Development Agency, ERDA, and now the Department of Energy, DOE), the lab cannot openly advertise this community service, because such notices could be construed as using public funds to solicit support for the lab’s budget. The ads routinely placed in the Stanford University Daily are acceptable within the letter of the law because they are defined as intraorganizational notices.

The shift from passive dispensation of information upon request to more assertive public relations is a move made in the 1970s by SLAC as well as other laboratories. This development is analogous to the changed stance of the “statesmen” of high energy physics in Washington, D.C., and the aggressive political action of laboratory directors on behalf of their laboratories in the last forty years.⁶

Mutual self-interest governs this and other aspects of SLAC-University relations. Once a year, a massive tour of SLAC—twenty to thirty busloads of people—is arranged to impress the families of students as a part of graduation week festivities. Powerful and prestigious visitors to the university are generally given personal tours of SLAC. Ties to Stanford are stressed by the SLAC Public Information Office brochures, and in its fund-raising efforts the Stanford Development Office emphasizes the link to the famous research and Nobel Prize-winning work done at SLAC. The formal affiliation between the two institutions is such that the university has a contract from DOE to administer SLAC. Payroll and employee benefits, for example, are dispensed through Stanford. (This is why the USE was able to install a union at a government facility.)

This pattern of mutual assistance, whereby SLAC is used to enhance the prestige of the university and the university is used by SLAC as an administrative buffer that also disseminates information to citizens, is—so far as I know—unique among high energy physics laboratories. The interaction also has other rewards: physicists at SLAC often say that they have the benefits without the liabilities of a university environment. Stanford’s science and engineering programs are as extensive and powerful as those at either Caltech or MIT. Having SLAC on campus enhances Stanford’s position in the science and engineering communities, although in practice students at the Stanford Physics Department seldom visit SLAC.

In addition to its explicit public relations work, the Public Information Office conducts ten to twenty tours a week with a stronger educational emphasis. Science teachers at high schools and colleges throughout the San Francisco Bay area routinely arrange for their classes to be given tours. Local community and professional organizations also make use of this service. I worked at the lab for three years giving these tours. Although their purpose is didactic and the intentions of the guides are serious, I found most visitors on these tours arrived wanting to be awed rather than informed.

This demeanor of awe was especially marked among practicing scientists and engineers. Visitors often behaved as though they had been granted a special dispensation to see the inner sanctum of science and its most learned priests. Many were quite bluntly dismayed to find a woman guiding them through the hallowed precincts. One chairman of a leading chemistry department, at the head of a group of about seventy-five academic chemists visiting the lab, approached me and asked where the guide was. When I introduced myself, with barely concealed disdain he said, “Well, if they hired you, I suppose you know your stuff.”

Once a visitor passes the information booth and its surrounding shrubs of dark green manzanita, the first buildings come into view. In the center of the U-shaped group is a carefully landscaped approximation of the surrounding natural environment. About a dozen live oaks, sitting in disks of loose gravel, are surrounded by a closely cropped but very dense lawn kept green year-round, underscoring the hard sculptural form of the trees. At noon, if the weather is not too soggy, people play volleyball or football on the lawn. By creating an English green lawn in an environment of golden dry savannahs, the lab demonstrates both the authority of its own vision of nature and its power to commandeer water in a land of recurrent drought.

These messages have endangered the only indigenous element: the oaks are quite sensitive and will die if watered through the summer. Planting the trees in gravel is an attempt to have both the lawn and the trees survive. Elsewhere on the site, trees have had to be protected from people parking under them in the summer; the weight of the cars kills the oaks’ root systems. An ecosystem has been altered to create both an eloquent tableau vivant and a site for massive human enterprise. At least in this case, these two goals are severely conflicting.

On three sides of this grassy square are five of the more than one hundred structures on the site; the road forms the fourth side. These structures are of one, two, and three storeys, with facades of beige and grey aggregate. The flat roofs have deep overhangs, shadowing the many large windows. More shrub manzanita surrounds the buildings, which are linked by asphalt and concrete pathways. From the square and from each of these buildings, there are striking views of the region, including San Francisco Bay.

On a knoll at the left of the square as one approaches are the cafeteria and auditorium, joined by a wide breezeway. The walls of the cafeteria are mostly glass; the limited wall space is covered with rotating exhibits of artwork done by SLAC employees and a blackboard sometimes used by the physicists during their coffee breaks or after lunch. Outside, away from the square and sheltered by oaks, is a patio with several tables and chairs. Altogether there is seating for about one hundred (SLAC has about twelve hundred employees). The food is rather good for a cafeteria; the head of this service takes great personal care of the entire operation, and she and her staff (which is mostly Chicano) are friendly and skilled.⁷

Many people eat at the cafeteria every day, although a few occasionally walk the mile to nearby restaurants, drive to surrounding towns for lunch, or eat near the coin-operated food-dispensing machines around the lab. Sometimes people picnic on the pastoral site away from the buildings, but this is unusual for the physicists.⁸ The secretaries, librarians, and administrative assistants, all but one of whom are women, typically eat together in small clusters. The senior technicians, administrators, and physicists, most of them men, tend not to mingle across job classifications.

It is easy to distinguish between the groups at the cafeteria. The physicists are dressed most casually, in shirts with rolled sleeves and jeans or nondescript slacks. They disdain any clothing that would distinguish them from each other. The style to which they conform, furthermore, maintains a carefully calibrated distance from fashion, quality, or fit.⁹ Their general appearance would not be out of place in a middle-class midwestern suburb on a weekend. I can think of four exceptions among over one hundred physicists. One, who wears atypically tight jeans, is clearly identified as English. Another wears suits and is treated accordingly—like an administrator. The third is given to diverse eccentricities, such as purple shirts; he is thought to be anomalous in many ways. The fourth, whose clothes are neatly pressed, well made, and color-coordinated, is said to be really okay: he only dresses “that way” because his wife buys his clothes.

Engineers and senior technicians seem to affect either a collegiate style (khakis, button-down Oxford shirts, and crew-neck sweaters) or a studiously informal appearance (polyester pants and lightly starched shirts). Administrators wear classic business attire, but leave their jackets in the office. Secretaries, administrative assistants, and the few female administrators dress informally but not casually, in dresses and pantsuits. The clothing of the women physicists generally consists of slacks or jeans with a belt and a shirt. In several years at the lab I have seen only one wearing a skirt, and that was only on one occasion.¹⁰

Usually the physicists from each experimental research group will walk as a body to the cafeteria and then sit together, pulling a few tables end to end and making room for late arrivals. Sometimes senior physicists from different groups have lunch to discuss lab business. Theorists eat in smaller clusters. While eating, people scan the room frequently, not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: An Anthropologist Studies Physicists
• 1 Touring the Site: Powerful Places in the Laboratory
• 2 Inventing Machines That Discover Nature: Detectors at SLAC and KEK
• 3 Pilgrim’s Progress: Male Tales Told During a Life in Physics
• 4 Ground States: Distinctions and the Ties That Bind
• 5 Buying Time and Taking Space: Negotiations, Collaboration, and Change
• Epilogue: Knowledge and Passion
• Notes
• Index