A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

latest news

02/27/19
Quartz

Tape is here to rescue big data

While tape technology may have largely disappeared from our daily lives, it turns out that it’s critical to places that deal with big data like CERN.

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Conceptual illustration

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. 

07/01/07

Roshan Houshmand: PRIMAL trails

It began with a guest speaker in her small upstate New York town. Roshan Houshmand’s uncles were visiting, and because of their engineering background, she thought a talk on physics would be ideal for a night of entertainment.

07/01/07

Cordless juice

Peter Fisher was in the audience when Marin Soljacic, a fellow physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave a lunchtime talk about a technology that could transform consumer electronics.

07/01/07

Chalkboard

Chalkboard discussions usually arise spontaneously, with one person explaining something to a small group standing nearby. Scratchings on the board tend to represent fragments of a conversation rather than a complete train of thought.

07/01/07

Rig, and rig alike

When objects weighing thousands of pounds have to be moved, the call goes out to riggers— specialized teams that work with hoists and cranes. They’re required to wear proper safety gear; and at some point, the riggers at SLAC decided to make a statement with their helmets.

07/01/07

Run, Rabbit, run

The problem: How to get short-lived radioactive drugs from the nuclear physics lab that makes them to a hospital 2.5 kilometers away, on the far side of a busy campus, in two minutes flat.

07/01/07

Secrets of a heavyweight

A dozen years after it first appeared on the world stage, the top quark is still one of the hottest topics in particle physics. Why is it so much heavier than any other particle? And what can it tell us about the origin of mass and other quantum mysteries?

An illustration of a film strip with particle events on each frame
07/01/07

Particle event

Scientists call the particle collisions and interactions they study “particle events.”

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