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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.

02/01/12

Bulldoggish on science

West of Chicago, the town of Batavia, Ill., has long been dominated by two images: Fermilab and the local high school mascot, the bulldog.

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

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

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

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.

10/01/11

Science worth trudging for

Would you walk 10,000 steps for a piece of glass the size of a deck of cards? What if that piece of glass were part of an astrophysics experiment to warn people about potentially deadly asteroids zooming toward Earth and make a 3D map of the universe?

Illustration of pineapple (right) pineapple cut in half (left)

10/01/11

Symmetry

Symmetry is an expression of exact correspondence between things.

10/01/11

Cyclotron patent

On January 26, 1932, Ernest Lawrence applied for a patent on the cyclotron.

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