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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.

12/01/07

Computers take on more than aliens

They started out scanning the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence with SETI@ home. They’ve plotted chess moves, battled malaria, and folded proteins, all from their home computers. Now, volunteers are tackling particle physics with LHC@home.

12/01/07

Entering Higgs habitat

A powerful new collider will allow scientists to explore the territory where the long-sought Higgs particle—maybe even a whole family of them—resides.

12/01/07

Life among the physics tribes

Meeting in CERN’s Restaurant 1, anthropologist Arpita Roy of the University of California, Berkeley is quick to declare that she will not be having any more coffee today. She has begun drinking multiple cups per day as she meets with CERN physicists to learn about their work.

Simulation showing a spray of particles created in a particle collision

12/01/07

Protecting the LHC from itself

Scientists at CERN have crafted the world’s most sophisticated machine protection system to save the LHC from itself.

12/01/07

Spartan software

Every time Fermilab scientist Tom Schwarz starts up SpartyJet, he inwardly grimaces. The computer program works well. It does a fine job of finding and recording jets—sprays of subatomic particles that emerge from collisions involving protons.

11/01/07

Dark energy

In the fall of 1997, I was leading the calibration and analysis of data gathered by the High-z Supernova Search Team, one of two teams of scientists the other was the Supernova Cosmology Projecttrying to determine the fate of our universe: Will it expand forever, or will it halt and contract, r

11/01/07

GEQ***T

When Tom Nash bought a new Porsche 911 Carrera 4, he wanted to give it some personal flair. So he applied for a custom license plate: GEQ8PIT.

11/01/07

Free for all

The next big experiment in particle physics won’t need an accelerator, detector, or other big machine. It doesn’t even involve subatomic particles—unless you count the electrons that flow through electronic circuits, carrying bits of information from one human brain to the next.

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