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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.

11/01/08

The dark universe debate

Who will be the first to prove the existence of dark matter and dark energy? A particle physicist and an astrophysicist go head to head.

11/01/08

Where old physics stuff goes to live

The Fermilab boneyard is no burial ground; its a place where unwanted parts find new homes and lives. Theyre matched with scientists who can put them to good use, donated to local schools and parks, or sold for recycling.

An illustration of a teapot letting off steam

11/01/08

Magnet quench

A quench occurs when a magnet in a particle accelerator loses its superconductivity.

11/01/08

Life's one eclipse after another

On the wall outside Cherrill Spencer's office, a scientific poster describes a prototype for a new type of accelerator magnet; a card thanks her for donating her long hair to make a wig for an ailing girl; and a scribbled note points to a spot on a map southeast of Novosibirsk, Russia.

11/01/08

Q&A With eta sub b

symmetrys Calla Cofield scored an exclusive interview with the particle -- the ground state -- the artist -- eta sub b, who signs his name ηb.

09/01/08

Contraterrene matter

As the winter of 1941 began, Jack Williamson sat in a small unpainted cabin he had built on his familys New Mexico ranch, pounding out a story on a secondhand Remington portable typewriter.

09/01/08

Chomp a cup for science

When you walk into a bar you expect to see whiskey bottles and beer taps, not stacks of tooth-imprinted foam cups.

09/01/08

The LHC express

As passengers boarded the train in a Berlin suburb, researchers from the Large Hadron Collider greeted them: Imagine you are a proton and this train is the LHC tunnel. You will travel 37 km, slightly more than the 27 km it takes the protons to circle the LHC tunnel.

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