Life as an accelerator operator

Behind some of the world's biggest scientific instruments are teams with a set of skills you can't find anywhere else. One Friday night in March, accelerator operator Alyssa Miller was chatting with fellow staff members in the rec center at the US Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory right after she finished her shift. As they talked, several of her colleagues' cell phones started buzzing. Scrambling to check their messages, they realized the local utility company had abr...