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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.

12/01/06

The many lives of Fermi's magnet

If this magnet could talk, you'd hear some amazing stories. During its half-century career, this four-million-pound magnet contributed to experiments that changed our view of physics while serving some of the field's foremost experimenters, including Enrico Fermi.

12/01/06

Lylie Fisher: Beauty bubbles through

For artist Lylie Fisher, particle physics is much more than a field of science. It is art: "Like art, particle physics deals with the invisible," says Fisher. "One portrays emotional and spiritual experiences; the other studies unseen matter and energy.

11/01/06

Cosmic microwave background

The big-bang theory of the early universe implies that the universe is immersed in a bath of microwave light, a cooled-down remnant of early high-temperature radiation, invisible to the naked eye.

11/01/06

Rainy-day rehab

From the day it was completed in the early days of Fermilab, the design of the Meson Lab roof has been an aesthetic success and a structural nightmare. It leaks. Always has.

11/01/06

Catching neutrinos in China

Buried deep in the mountains of southern China, a new neutrino experiment would rely on a series of Chinese nuclear reactors and the brains of scientists from several countries.

11/01/06

It absolutely had to arrive on time

The inaugural beam for the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) project took just 2.5 milliseconds to fly 732 km through the earth from Geneva, Switzerland, to its destination at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory near Rome on Monday, September 11, 2006.

11/01/06

The European strategy for particle physics

At a special meeting in Lisbon on July 14, the CERN Council unanimously adopted a 17-point European Strategy for Particle Physics, based on the premise that "Europe should maintain and strengthen its central position in particle physics."

11/01/06

Takin' care of (SLAC) business

When 20-year-old Ryan Auer set out to find his very first job, he didn't expect to wind up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, let alone on stage in front of over 1000 people at the lab's annual Family Day.

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