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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.

05/01/06

30-ton foot

Pakistan does not have a long history of domestic particle physics experiments, but the country is nevertheless finding ways to contribute to international efforts.

04/01/06

Tevatron record

The Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab set a world record on Sunday afternoon, July 3, 1983, achieving a beam energy of 512 billion electronvolts (GeV). Accelerator operators had made the first-ever attempt at accelerating a beam in the Tevatron at 3:12 a.m. that day, reaching 250 GeV.

04/01/06

PEP-II interaction region

The Stanford Linear Accelerator pumps large amounts of energy into beams of electrons and positrons, sending them into the PEP-II storage ring where the particles can collide, revealing the secrets of fundamental particle processes.

04/01/06

Light sources

Light sources are accelerator-based machines used for research in fields from physics and chemistry to medicine and forensics.

04/01/06

Aerial photos of SLAC

Most people like to keep their hobbies and work separate. But not Steve Williams.

04/01/06

Old giant hangs on

In biology, there is a loose rule of thumb that says the bigger an organism, the longer its life will be. If Fermilab's "Jolly Green Giant" is any indication, the rule may also apply to equipment in high-energy physics.

04/01/06

24/7: Labs that never sleep

Here they measure the time not in minutes or hours. Instead they think in terms of how many antiprotons are ready to stack and how soon the Tevatron will be ready to accept new beam. Or how fast they need to fix something, any time of the day or night. Or how long they can stay awake.

04/01/06

Forget Albert

Quick, give an example of a first name of a physicist. Albert? Benjamin? Sure, Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin are famous examples. But their first names are rather unusual.

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