A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

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05/02/19
Fermilab

A quantum leap in particle simulation

A group of scientists at Fermilab has figured out how to use quantum computing to simulate the fundamental interactions that hold together our universe.

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ALICE with one door open

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.

02/01/08

Physicists rock

Wherever physics goes, music follows, from the lyrical strains of flute and violin to Blue Wine, Les Horribles Cernettes and Drug Sniffing Dogs.

02/01/08

Notes from the underworld

They had braved Parisian catacombs, gloomy dungeons, and shipwrecks. Yet as the elevator dropped 360 feet into a cavernous hall at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, uncertainty flickered across the faces of the globe-trotting television crew.

02/01/08

Jennifer Ouellette: The Big Bang Theory

One of my favorite scenes in The Big Bang Theory involves the two main characters, Leonard and Sheldon, trying to move a large, flat box up two flights of stairs. Faced with no equipment and little upper-body strength, Leonard declares, “We are physicists!

02/01/08

Dating a saint

Two towns in Italy lay claim to relics from St. Francis of Assisi–pieces of clothing and an embroidered cushion from his deathbed.

02/01/08

Biking the snow away

After seeing a documentary on Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition, in which men ate shoe leather to survive in bone-chilling temperatures, David Peterson felt kind of silly about letting snow stop his bicycle ride to work.

Logbook of December 2007
12/01/07

CMS cosmic challenge

In August 2006, scientists working on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN conducted a Cosmic Challenge to test components of their 12,500-ton CMS particle detector.

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