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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.

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.

08/22/08

The Paul Revere of pulses

08/14/08

On course for a convincing supernova

08/01/08

Z boson

In May 1983, physicists on the UA1 detector for the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator at CERN made the first definitive observations of the Z boson.

08/01/08

Rat rod

Parked between a shiny green Camaro and a remodeled '63 Mustang, a 1929 Ford Model A pickup-turned-hot rod is a mosaic of rust and rot. A rag plugs the radiator, and ancient wooden slats border the truck bed.

08/01/08

COUPP bubble chamber

Donald Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley, won a Nobel Prize for inventing the bubble chamber in 1952 as a way of detecting subatomic particles. Now a University of Chicago professor, Juan Collar, is leading the charge to make the bubble chamber cool and cutting-edge again.

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