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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.

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

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.

11/01/08

Home sweet barn

Lifted out of a travel carrier, the owl screeched and bit its handler's leather glove. The bird was returning to its historic home—and helping to save its species.

11/01/08

Sloan Survey shares starry snapshots

In the old days, astronomers who wanted to use a powerful telescope had to buy plane tickets and cross their fingers the weather would cooperate.

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

Weird new hazard: snoopy, itchy cows

In the control room in Argentina, the detector screen went blank. “We've been cowed again,” announced an exasperated scientist.

09/01/08

David Kirkby: It's a snail shell! It's a Koosh ball! It's physics!

Blackboards filled with mathematical equations and scientific machines as large as cathedrals can awe, and sometimes overwhelm. But Koosh balls are another matter.

Illustration of neutrino symbols on a scale

09/01/08

Neutrino masses

Neutrino masses are extremely difficult to measure. While we know precisely how much an electron weighs, we have little information on the mass of its neutral partner, the electron neutrino. The same is true of the muon neutrino and tau neutrino.

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