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In November 1949 Chien-Shiung Wu and her graduate student, Irving Shaknov, descended to a laboratory below Columbia University’s Pupin Hall. They needed antimatter for a new experiment, so they made their own, using a machine called a cyclotron. The machine’s multiton magnet was so gigantic that, according to university folklore, a decade earlier administrators had to blast a hole in an exterior wall and recruit the football team to maneuver the block of iron into the building. The magnetic field produced by a cyclotron accelerates particles to dizzying speeds. In the lab, Wu and Shaknov used it to bombard a sheet of copper with deuterons, generating an unstable isotope, Cu 64, as a source of positrons—the antimatter. When a positron and an electron collide, they annihilate eac...

In a Nutshell Catholics in the 19th century were supposed to avoid eating for long periods and to abstain from certain food the vast majority of days during Lent. In previous centuries, the total number of fasting and abstinence days per year in the Church once topped 100. The Church has always recommended fasting and abstinence as penance for sin and armor against temptation. Some say the Church has lost something as fasting and abstinence have waned. One author recommends training your body through diet changes to make fasting less torturous while still an act of penance. Has It Been a Tough Lent? Consider how Catholics around seven generations ago lived it. For many in the 19th century, Lent meant no meat, eggs, butter, cheese or milk, for 40 days. Nearly every day during Lent also was ...

COMMENTARY: Whatever your reason for wanting to become Catholic, run with it. It’s your road sign pointing you in the right direction. “What do I do till RCIA starts?” someone asked me and some other people who’d entered the Church as adults. She’d grown up in an unreligious home and didn’t have much idea how religious institutions worked, especially one with as many rules as the Catholic Church.  After a long time of reflection, in January she’d decided to become a Catholic and started going to Mass, and then found that the instruction in her new parish didn’t start till the fall. She couldn’t enter the Church for a year and a couple months. She seemed to feel that a long time to fill out. I told her to go on as she started.  This advice may help people like her, but also people...

8 Great Reflections on the Passion Palm Sunday (Year A)By Fr. Victor Feltes Today’s Gospel is long, but this reading is rich. So here, briefly, are eight great reflections on the Passion. At the Last Supper, Jesus told his apostles, “One of you will betray me.” They each replied, “Surely it is not I, Lord?” except for Judas Iscariot, who said, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” (Rabbi means teacher.) There is a big difference between Jesus just being a teacher and being your Lord. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus lovingly willed to save us but his humanity understandably dreaded the tortures his self-sacrifice could entail. He prayed: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.” In this, Jesus shows us that we are allowed to pray for any ...