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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.

09/01/07

From rivets to ribbits

An impromptu frog habitat vanished with final repairs to the roof of Fermilab's Meson Lab. Leaks—lots of leaks—have plagued the lab's 12 blue and orange concave arches since it opened 32 years ago.

09/01/07

The end of the HERA era

Laughter punctuates the excited conversations, a mix of German and English. Drinks are passed around and children dart among the legs of the hundred or so scientists gathered together for one last time. The sky’s blue is deepening: only 90 minutes until sunset.

An illustration of a hand writing an equation

09/01/07

Theory

Theories describe scientists’ understanding of observed phenomena.

09/01/07

Butterfly researchers come to Fermilab for rare species

Scientists usually search Fermilab for exotic particles, but two Alabama researchers recently sought another rarity—a butterfly called the Gray Comma.

09/01/07

The art of the unseen

As technology evolves, posters are getting easier to produce and pass around. But it still takes skill and imagination to illustrate the abstract ideas of physics.

09/01/07

Particles in the sky

What is the universe made of? What are matter, energy, space, and time? How did we get here and where are we going? In particle physics, the classic place to look for answers is in giant accelerators where particles collide. But nature also provides a wealth of data.

08/01/07

Plutonium

Atomic element 94 was named “plutonium” after Pluto, the ninth planet from the Sun (now demoted to “minor planet” status.) By tradition, plutonium should have been assigned the symbol “Pl,” but co-discoverer Glenn Seaborg gave it the symbol “Pu” as

Four people pulling on four corners of a space blanket

08/01/07

Dark energy

Dark energy, the weirdest and most abundant stuff in the universe, is causing the expansion of the universe to speed up.

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