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QuarkNet was first established in 1999. QuarkNet staff member Kenneth Cecire recruited the first teachers to form a virtual group in the Summer of 2007. That small group met at FermiLab. After consulting with some of personnel establishing at FermiLab a virtual control room to monitor and operate the Large Hadronic Collider (LHC) at CERN, the teacher group attempted to take what the virtual control room group had learned about virtual groups and establish the first virtual QuarkNet group. This involved learning how to communicate using EVO, the large distributed VRVS collaboration system created by Caltech for use by high energy physicists. The video link required broadband internet which, depending on internet traffic, sometimes provided no video at all. While Caltech worked to improve the technology, the virtual QuarkNet group occasionally battled with lost connections and considerable audio difficulties. The group found that sometimes they had to use the back-up telephone bridge for audio communications. One group member only had available Internet via Satellite. The time lag causes by the distance the signal travelled did not impair communication much, but the bandwidth available restricted the video to occasionally updating still images. But the technology did allow for sharing desktop information and texting. The Caltech team has done much to monitor the system and automate real time correction of difficulties when they occur. The EVO system is now a viable means for maintaining a virtual QuarkNet collaboration.
In the Spring of 2009, physics Dan Karmgard and Antonio Delgado of the University of Notre Dame agreed to become mentors to the virtual QuarkNet group. It seemed clear that such an ongoing collaboration required the group have a mission or common goal. Developing a network of cosmic ray detectors and coordinating useful data collection became the group's primary focus.
This is the dawn of an exciting age of new discovery in the study of elementary particles and the interactions among them. The theoretical framework of the fundamental nature of matter, the Standard Model, explains much, but much remains unclear. What is dark matter? What happened to antimatter? Are there extra dimensions of spacetime? Are there new symmetries of Nature? Are there new, as yet unobserved forces? What is responsible for mass?
Physicists are embarking on using the Large Hadronic Collider at CERN to find evidence of the Higgs Particle which helps to explain why particles have mass. It is hoped that the LHC might also give clues how to expand the Standard Model to account for dark matter. The large interferometers in Mississippi and at Hanford in Washington State are looking for evidence of gravitational waves. Investigations of cosmic rays and astrological observations of the most distant events in the universe might give clues about the nature of dark energy and perhaps clarify the bounds of string theory.
virtual QuarkNet hopes to keep group members abreast of the latest discoveries and theories as well as provide students with first hand experiences with such research through individual local and eventually collaborative network efforts to detect and understand cosmic rays.
If you are a teacher interested in joining QuarkNet, and find that the site based groups (described on the previous page) are not located close to you, you may wish to contact by e-mail one of the following about virtual QuarkNet:
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This project has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation and the Office of High Energy Physics, Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy. However the choice of content, opinions expressed and any omissions or other errors are those of D. Trapp and not the responsibility of NSF, DoE, FermiLab or QuarkNet. |