Congress is Coming: Are You Ready?

The PhysCon planning committee and SPS staff are pictured at X (formerly Google X) headquarters, where they discussed options for site visits during the 2016 Quadrennial Physics Congress. Photo courtesy of Richard Prince.

Big things have a way of happening in four-year cycles. The Olympics. The US presidential elections. And, as every SPS member knows: the Sigma Pi Sigma Quadrennial Physics Congress (PhysCon).

With only a few months remaining until the 2016 Congress, we’re excited. And we hope you are too. Are you ready for a lineup of all-star speakers? Are you ready for workshops that immerse you in issues important to the physics community? Are you ready to make new, lifelong friends from across the country?

As a taste of what’s to come, we offer in this issue of The SPS Observer a preview of the science and technology site visits you can choose from at PhysCon. Thanks to the hard work of our planning committee, NASA’s Ames Research Center will open its doors to you, as will Stanford’s Linear Accelerator Center and the Google innovative experimental laboratory known simply as “X.” You can also enter an art contest and interact with professional scientists over breakfast. Keep reading to learn more! //

Google self-driving vehicle prototypes were embellished by local artists for a “Paint the Town” event in Austin, TX. Photo courtesy of Google.