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Kids of all ages flocked to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to learn about the universe and have fun doing it.

In Gran Sasso National Laboratory’s cavernous Hall B, beneath 1400 meters of rock, amongst huge detectors of neutrinos and dark matter, Italian actor Marco Paolini spoke. And more than one million people listened—and watched.

The Large Hadron Collider, a steely pinnacle of physics and engineering, doesn't generally bring soft, snuggly thoughts to mind. But that may change for people who see Kate Findlay''s quilts.

Close to the Canadian border, near an area known as the Boundary Waters, scientists are building an experiment to discover how neutrino masses stack up. They aim to get closer to understanding how matter came to dominate antimatter in our universe.

Picturing the world's particle physics laboratories.

It all started with a swimming hole. In 1988, Maggie Keswick, the wife of noted architect and designer Charles Jencks, had a swamp dug up on her family's Scottish estate to create a place for their children to swim. To Jencks, the excavated earth provided an opportunity not just to shape the estate''s landscape, but to invent a new grammar of landscape design.

An artist's search for a new way to create color could compel science to ask a few new questions of its own.

For nearly 15 years, artist John Zaklikowski collected every computer, telephone, answering machine, stereo, and remote control that passed through his hands. He enjoyed taking the electronics apart, but wasn't always as good at putting things back together. And so he collected bits and pieces, saving the parts he liked—circuit boards, hard drives, video cards—until he had quite a stash.

Voss-Andreae goes beyond literal representation, infusing his quantum objects with philosophical interpretations.

What opera and physics may have in common, more than anything else, is their tendency to make most people cringe or fall asleep. Can an avant-garde opera that compares self-exploration to the physics of multiple dimensions invigorate audiences? The creators of Hypermusic Prologue, A Projective Opera in Seven Planes seem to think so.

In Japanese, Takuya Uruno's first name means "pioneer." In his 25-year career as a professional Manga artist, Uruno has been steadfast in living up to the title. He has spent only five years working on the popular serials that Manga is most commonly associated with and another 20 working in advertising and public relations, trying to find ways that Manga can function as something more than entertainment.

These exquisite test samples transcend their original purpose—ensuring all the metal parts of SLAC accelerators and detectors are flawless.

Sergio Cittolin is first and foremost a physicist in search of answers to the mysteries of the universe. Yet he also has an artistic bent, and his talent for drawing has woven itself nicely into his 30 years of work at CERN. The result is a collection of Leonardo da Vinci-style illustrations that brighten CERN hallways, a book, and the covers of a number of technical documents.

Jorge Cham's popular comic strip about the lives of hapless grad students takes him to the Large Hadron Collider—and launches a series of comics that explains the science with remarkable clarity.

These photos represent an eye blink in the evolution of the Linac Coherent Light Source, a groundbreaking facility taking shape at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. During the past two years, workers excavated more than 180,000 cubic yards of earth and added more than half a mile of tunnel to the lab's existing linear accelerator to accommodate the world's first hard X-ray free electron laser.

Blackboards filled with mathematical equations and scientific machines as large as cathedrals can awe, and sometimes overwhelm. But Koosh balls are another matter.

In our October/November issue, we asked readers to share stories and photographs of physics-related license plates. Here are the responses.

In an empty urban lot beneath an overpass in Philadelphia, drummers beat a slow and steady rhythm. Two groups of dancers circle them in opposite directions. The drums pick up speed, pounding louder, the spaces between the beats filling with the clash of cymbals and a complex clatter of superimposed rhythms. The dancers' steps quicken. They race around the circle, faster, faster. Wham! They collide, spinning off in various directions.