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Muons: Emblems of discovery

01/13/26

Once a surprise to physicists, these particles are useful tools inside and outside the realm of particle physics. 

07/01/07

Talk and chalk

Theorists can’t help it: When asked to explain something, they reach for a piece of chalk. The language of math and physics seems to require a writing implement and a large vertical surface.

07/01/07

Pesky invaders

An overgrown zebra mussel population at Fermilab received a rude awaking when operations engineers treated the lab’s water cooling system in early June to remove nearly 4000 pounds of mussels.

05/01/07

The blue book

Affectionately known at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) as simply “The Blue Book,” The Stanford Two-Mile Accelerator has been a classic on site since the day it was published in 1968.

05/01/07

Those pesky humans

Lead bricks and radiation gloves normally indicate a need to protect lab workers from radioactivity. For a laboratory at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, however, the opposite is true.

05/01/07

Farmers' picnic

Just inside the site boundary, secluded from most of Fermilab, sits Leonard Baumann's rickety red barn. Baumann, like 55 other farmers, relocated 40 years ago to make way for the construction of Fermilab.

05/01/07

The search for dark energy

What is this stuff that fills the vacuum of space, accelerates the expansion of the universe, and accounts for 70 percent of everything? More than two dozen experiments aim to find out.

05/01/07

A tale of dark energy

In the 1990s, astronomical observations revealed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Not knowing what causes this acceleration, scientists began to attribute the phenomenon to some unknown source of energy, coined "dark energy" by astrophysicist Michael Turner.

05/01/07

The great string debate

Inside, the auditorium at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, was packed and humming in anticipation. Outside, a man waved a sign at stragglers hurrying for the door: "Need One Ticket for String Theory Debate."