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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.

04/01/08

Now that's serious metal music

Tesla coils always draw crowds, and the DucKon science fiction convention in Naperville, Illinois, was no exception. People gathered around the seven-foot-tall metal transformer tower and awaited its monotone crackle, purple sparks, and thrilling flashes of artificial lightning.

04/01/08

Rare decays

Scientists search for rare decays to test their understanding of how matter behaves.

04/01/08

Taking prototypes to the next dimension

As popular as the snack vending machine it resembles, a new 3D printer has been busy dispensing plastic-wrapped treats for designers and engineers.

04/01/08

A yen for dough like mom made

Many high-energy physics laboratories have athletic clubs, music clubs, or chess clubs, but a bread-tasting club? Only in Japan. And only at Koo Energy Ken, KEK, outside of Tsukuba.

04/01/08

Geek cruise

For most people, a Caribbean cruise is an opportunity for sun-splashed daydreaming, guiltless beach reading, and lackadaisical dips in warm, shimmering waters—in other words, complete mental repose.

04/01/08

Persis Drell: New SLAC director grapples with change

Layoffs, budget cuts, a call for new vision in high-energy physics -- in her first months as director of Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Persis Drell had a lot to navigate.

04/01/08

Numb3rs to DZero

On the hit television show Numb3rs, where crimes are solved with math and science, cosmologist and theoretical physicist Larry Fleinhardt has lived in a monastery and flown into space searching for a sense of purpose. The next step takes him to Fermilab.

04/01/08

From atom smashers to X-ray movies

When particle accelerators gave birth to the powerful X-ray microscopes known as synchrotrons, they revolutionized the study of virtually every field of science.

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