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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.

08/01/06

CERN cafeteria

Walk into the main CERN cafeteria at various times of the day and you'll find different scenes: scientists discussing results over coffee; a parent coaxing his children to finish lunch before swooping them back to the nursery school on site; groups of grad students soaking up the sun on the

08/01/06

Looking for leptons in all the right places

In a typical high school physics textbook, says scienceeducation specialist Beth Marchant, only the last chapter is devoted to all the developments since 1900–the stuff that physicists are actually working on today.

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

US Congress meets Quantum Universe

Have you ever tossed a ball at a wall, playing a game of one-man catch? As you tossed that ball again and again and again, have you ever thought about the chance that it could go right through the wall? According to quantum mechanics, this is a real possibility.

07/01/06

Spallation Neutron Source

Neutron scattering research has improved the quality of many everyday items: Shatter-proof windshields, credit cards, pocket calculators, airplanes, compact discs, and magnetic storage tapes are just some examples.

07/01/06

SLAC's water cycle

Along the Loop Road at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the roar of falling water and a refreshing mist filled the air after six solid weeks of California rain. But the water cascading down the inside of Campus Cooling Tower 101, and landing in a frothy pool, is hardly scenic.

07/01/06

From placemat to prodigy

Over a half-eaten burrito or a bowl of spaghetti, Sam Ehrenstein ponders the unanswered questions of fundamental physics. Yet Sam is no experimental physicist or postdoc brooding over his data. Not yet, anyway.

07/01/06

A report like no other

Can the unique EPP2010 panel steer US particle physics away from its looming crisis? Physicists and policy makers are depending on it.

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