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Muons: Emblems of discovery

01/13/26

Diana Kwon

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

03/01/12

The brain behind TV's The Big Bang Theory

For those who live, breathe and laugh physics, one show entangles them all: The Big Bang Theory. To make the show's jokes timely and accurate, while sprinkling the sets with authentic scientific plots and posters, the show's writers depend on one physicist, David Saltzberg.

02/01/12

Cosmic microwave background

Cosmic microwave background is the oldest light in the universe.

02/01/12

W precision measurement

The W boson mass is one of the fundamental ingredients that scientists use to calculate particle physics properties, such as the most likely mass of the soughtafter Higgs particle.

02/01/12

X-rays reveal poison in Mona Lisa model

Scientists had already deconstructed Mona Lisa's smile. Now, with intense beams of X-rays, they have analyzed her hair.

02/01/12

Going public

How the public release of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope’s main instrument has affected the hundreds of researchers who use it—and resulted in more and better science.

02/01/12

Science for all and all for science

Recently members of a group playing an online game called Foldit were able to solve a 15-year-old problem—determining the complex structure of an HIV protein—in just two weeks. This was made possible through citizen cyberscience.

02/01/12

Taking the heat out of nuclear waste

Particle accelerators have the potential to address critical issues for the future of nuclear energy.

02/01/12

A brainy look at dark matter

Have you ever sat in an open field at night, looked up at the vast number of stars and thought, “I bet an artificial brain would come in handy for making sense of all this”? You might if you were planning the best way for NASA to map the sky.

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