A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

latest news

06/01/18
Quanta

Evidence found for a new fundamental particle

The MiniBooNE experiment has detected far more electron neutrinos than predicted: a possible harbinger of a revolutionary new elementary particle called the sterile neutrino.

View full archive
ALICE with one door open

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.

01/01/06

Top turns 10, in a manner of speaking

After the discovery of a new elementary particle 10 years ago by Fermilab's CDF and DZero detector collaborations, a group from DZero threw a party. Between bottles of bubbly celebrating the top quark's detection, a contest of brains was in full-swing.

01/01/06

Artifact: Relativator

Few periods in history were shaped by science as much as the 1950s. The Cold War was in full swing. The space race was finishing its first lap with Sputnik's launch. The Manhattan Project remained fresh in everyone's minds.

01/01/06

Neutrinos: a gateway to new physics

Nature provides three kinds of neutrinos. In the last ten years, physicists have gathered increasingly strong evidence for neutrino oscillations, the transformation of one kind of neutrino into another one.

01/01/06

Unitary triangle

The weak force is responsible for the decay of matter: unstable particles made of heavy quarks and antiquarks decay into particles made of their lighter cousins.

An illustration of a factory
01/01/06

B factories

B factories mass-produce B mesons, particles that contain a bottom quark.

01/01/06

Slashdotted

When the 10th issue of symmetry magazine came out on October 12, the magazine's Web server crashed unexpectedly. Looking at the Web traffic statistics, the reason became obvious: symmetry had been "slashdotted."

01/01/06

Graduate school gourmet

If you are working on a PhD, chances are you're too busy feeding your brain to plan your next meal. Particle physicists share how they managed when they needed cheap or fast meals during grad school.

01/01/06

PANIC trouble

When physicists organized the first Particles and Nuclei International Conference in 1963, nobody thought that the acronym PANIC could cause trouble in getting the word out about the meeting. That was before the now-common use of email.

View full archive