Kurt Riesselmann

The Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment aims to discover whether neutrinos violate the fundamental matter–antimatter symmetry of physics.

Serge Haroche and David Wineland, who opened a new era of research by building particle traps and experimenting with individual particles without destroying them, were honored with the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics.

The Department of Energy has announced Mission Need approval for the Muon g-2 experiment.

Neutrinos zip straight through the Earth, while rarely leaving a trace. Yet these particles may hold answers to many of the key questions of 21st century particle physics. Around the world, scientists are creating an array of increasingly sophisticated neutrino experiments to find these answers.

Physicists have been inventing new types of accelerators to propel charged particles to higher and higher energies for more than 80 years. Today, scientists estimate that more than 17,000 accelerators are in operation around the world—in industry, in hospitals, and at research institutions.

The Gargamelle collaboration at the European laboratory CERN began operating its bubble chamber in the early 1970s, shooting neutrinos through 12,000 liters of Freon, a heavy liquid. Cameras took photos from various angles every time a pulse of neutrinos traversed the five-meter-long bubble chamber.

In 1991, James Cronin travelled to Leeds, England, to visit Alan Watson, an expert on cosmic-ray physics. Cronin, a Nobel Prize winner in physics who had worked on accelerator-based particle physics experiments, wanted to discuss ideas for cosmic-ray projects. Inspired by a proposal by Russian physicist Georgiǐ Khristiansen, he was eager to see the construction of a large array of detectors to unravel the mysteries of the highest-energy cosmic rays in the universe.

On September 10, 2008, scientists at the European laboratory CERN attempted for the first time to send a beam of particles around a new particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider. The machine has a circumference of 27 kilometers and uses thousands of magnets to steer particles around the ring.

Inspired by heroes of Greek mythology, physicists are on a quest to find a cheaper, more efficient way to capture neutrinos—one of the strangest and most fascinating particles in the universe. Liquid-argon detectors may hold the key to discovering whether neutrinos are the reason that stars, planets, and people exist.

In August 1982, Margaret Thatcher, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, paid a private visit to the European laboratory CERN. On her arrival she told Director General Herwig Schopper that she wanted to be treated as a fellow scientist. Schopper gave Thatcher, who had studied chemistry, a tour of the laboratory and told her about the ongoing search for the carriers of the weak nuclear force.

Do the most energetic particles in the universe come from supermassive black holes? New results from the Pierre Auger Observatory make that case.

Particles and prairie. For many people, these words are synonymous with Fermilab. In the 1970s, when founding director Robert Wilson led the construction of the Tevatron particle accelerator, Robert Betz launched in the center of its four-mile ring one of the earliest and most ambitious prairie reconstruction projects in the state of Illinois.