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Physics News Update
Number 608 #4, October 8, 2002 by Phil Schewe, James Riordon, and Ben Stein

SLAC is 40 Years Old

On October 2 the anniversary of SLAC's founding was observed at a large gathering (see SLAC webpage) The Stanford Linear Acceleration Center has been the scene of many notable strides in physics, including the deep inelastic scattering of electrons from a hydrogen target (helping to establish the existence of quarks inside protons and neutrons), the discovery of the Psi meson (helping to establish the existence of charm quarks; similar research was performed simultaneously at Brookhaven), the discovery of the tau lepton, studies of the Z boson (suggesting a limit on the number of quarks and leptons), and most recently studies of B meson decay (exhibiting a violation of CP conservation).