A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

latest news

06/15/18
Gizmodo

The Large Hadron Collider is getting an upgrade

Workers at the world’s largest atom smasher are breaking ground on a performance-enhancing upgrade that will allow scientists to conduct even bigger and better physics experiments.

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ALICE with one door open

Curiouser and curiouser: a riddle at the ALICE detector

12/09/25
Sarah Charley

In 2023, the ALICE experiment was ready for their best year yet, until a mysterious signal threatened everything. As the LHC wraps up its 2025 lead-ion run, physicists recall how they worked together to solve the puzzle.

03/01/06

ILC design

Supersymmetry. Dark matter. Extra dimensions. Scientists have proposed the International Linear Collider (ILC), a next-generation project designed to smash together electrons and their antiparticles at a higher-than-ever energy, to learn more about these and other mysteries of the universe.

03/01/06

A special introduction

“It’s not often you get introduced by a Nobel Prize winner,” said US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former professor of chemical engineering at MIT and CEO of a Fortune 300 company.

03/01/06

Where do they go?

High-energy physics labs worldwide are neighbors with numerous butterfly species–from the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus, photo) found near CERN to the Pipevine Swallowtail (Battus philenor) that shares the Bay Area with SLAC. But where do butterflies go in the winter?

Logbook of February 2006
02/01/06

Supernova 1987A

Upon arriving for work at the laboratory of Masatoshi Koshiba at the University of Tokyo, Yoji Totsuka handed me a fax telling of a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, picked up by optical telescopes.

02/01/06

Julian Voss-Andreae: In three dimensions

Unveiling the three-dimensional structure of proteins thrills scientists. While the potential for understanding the folding and function of enzymes is truly exciting by itself, exploring macromolecule structures also satisfies a more fundamental urge: to see the invisible.

02/01/06

Hitting the broad side of a (classified) barn

The distinctive and amusing term "barn" originated with two Purdue University physicists working on the Manhattan Project in 1942—and it was classified information by the US government until after World War II.

A burst of light
02/01/06

Luminosity

Luminosity is a measure of how many particles are brought together in a certain space over a certain period of time.

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