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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.

08/01/06

Fire-fighting foam

When the CERN safety team and I heard the loud rumbling 25 meters underground, we weren't concerned. With no warning, it would have been frightening, but the rush of water through pipes overhead presaged a thrilling event.

08/01/06

LHC meets industry

Building the parts for the Large Hadron Collider has presented challenges but taught many lessons for both particle physics laboratories and their industry partners.

08/01/06

From swords to plowshares

Despite struggling through economic failure during the 1990s, Russia's devotion to scientific collaboration in high-energy physics has grown stronger.

07/01/06

First vertex detector

The Positron Electron Project (PEP) collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center produced its first collisions in 1979. All sorts of particles burst out, including the tau lepton, an ephemeral cousin of the electron.

07/01/06

A magnus force on the mound

Major league pitcher Jeff Francis brings an educated insight to the physics of baseball.

07/01/06

The particle garden

Mesons. Bosons. Pions. Muons. Asparagus. Yes, asparagus. Physicists have spare time, too, and a few of them spend it in Fermilab's Garden Club, with roots almost as old as the lab itself.

Illustration of a man writing on a chalkboard

07/01/06

Elementary particle physics

Physics has demonstrated that the everyday phenomena we experience are governed by universal principles applying at time and distance scales far beyond normal human experience.

07/01/06

Ellis Paul: Did Galileo pray?

The sighting of Jupiter's moons by Galileo Galilei resonates through science and history. Using a handmade telescope in January 1610, Galileo confirmed the Copernican theory that the planets moved around the sun; the Earth was not the center of the solar system.

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