Number 143, September 9, 1993 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein SOFT GAMMA RAY REPEATERS (SGR's) are a small class of celestial objects (only 3 known specimens) that repeatingly (although not predictably) emit gammas with energies of tens of keV, in contrast to the more famous and higher-energy gamma ray bursters (more than a 1000 known) which seem never to repeat themselves. S.R. Kulkarni of Caltech and D.A. Frail of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory report that one of the repeaters, SGR1806-20, is coincident with a supernova remnant. This, along with a similar association noted for one of the other SGR's, strengthens the notion that repeaters are really neutron stars. (Nature, 2 Sep. 1993.) THE FATE OF THE SUPERCONDUCTING SUPER COLLIDER will be decided in Congress in the next few weeks. The House voted against it and now the Senate must decide. On Sept. 13 a group of notable physicists, including Leon Lederman, Burton Richter, Steven Weinberg, SSC director Roy Schwitters, and (by videotape) Stephen Hawking, will meet at George Washington University (Lisner Auditorium at 12 noon) to speak to an audience of students and scientists about why the SSC should be built. The event is sponsored by the Particles and Fields division of The American Physical Society (for further information, contact Michael Barnett at LBL, 510- 486-5650). THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICS (AJP) is 60 years old. Specializing in the instructional and cultural aspects of physics, the AJP has also carried articles on many of the important physics topics of the day. Examples include "Why the Woman Student Does Not Elect Physics" (John Daffin, 1937), "War Problems of the Physics Teacher" (Arthur Compton, 1942), Enrico Fermi on chain reactions (1952), Edward Purcell on nuclear magnetism (1954), Emilio Segre on antinucleons (1957), "A Physicist Examines the Kennedy Assassination" (Luis Alverez, 1976), and "Wormholes in Spacetime and Their Use for Interstellar Travel" (Kip Thorne, 1988). (See the Feb. 1993 issue of AJP.) THE STANDARD MODEL (circa 1993) , consisting of quarks and leptons interacting via force- carrying bosons, is not the first theory of everything. Berkeley science historian J.L. Heilbron describes two others. The Napoleonic standard model (circa 1800), based on the work of Coulomb, Laplace, Poisson, Ampere, and others, sought to make physics more like astronomy. According to Heilbron, they especially liked gravity's straightforward dependence on the inverse square of the distance between interacting bodies. The primary ingredients in the Napoleonic model were the electrical fluids (positive and negative), magnetic fluids (north and south), heat fluid (caloric), light, and the newly discovered infrared radiation. This model was done in partly by Fresnel's wave theory of light and Fourier's work on heat. Heilbron's other example, the Victorian standard model (circa 1890), based on the work of Maxwell, Lord Kelvin, Joule, Larmor and others, synthesized electricity, magnetism, and light, and pictured heat as being related to the motion of molecules. The Victorians were interested in studying the hypothetical aether continuum, whose mechanical properties could presumably be compared to those of springs, flywheels, and rubber bands. But Victorian thinking, like Napoleonic thinking, collapsed when it outran experimental results. (SLAC Beam Line, Summer 1993.)