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12/03/17

A winning map

The Fundamental Physics Prize recognizes WMAP’s contributions to precision cosmology.

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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.

04/01/05

Fermilab's "CMS branch office"

The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, and the new CMS offices at Fermilab are separated only by the amount of time it takes light to travel between the two places.

04/01/05

What's in the box?

In January 2000, Tom Jordan had just finished up a conference in San Diego, where he had presented one of the new cosmic ray detectors to QuarkNet teachers.

04/01/05

3.4 degrees of John Ellis

How is John Ellis, physicist at CERN, similar to Rod Steiger, actor from such films as On the Waterfront and The Pawnbroker?

04/01/05

Riding the plasma wave of the future

A creative group of trailblazers is reinventing particle acceleration by making electrons and positrons surf a wave of plasma.

03/01/05

Top quark

Theorists predicted the existence of a sixth quark in the 1970s, and no one imagined that finding the particle would take another two decades.

03/01/05

The smoking mouse

Because particle physicists cannot directly see the objects they study, they rely on deduction and decay products to detect nature's tiny, ephemeral particles.

03/01/05

A badge of honor and buffalo

Fermilab's new Girl Scout badge has troop #312 excited about "atoms and buffalo." Unlike a field trip where kids visit Fermilab to learn about physics in an "educational environment," the Girl Scouts' Fermilab outing lets kids come with their friends and a scout lead

03/01/05

Microchip

Custom designed microchips have become essential in processing signals from modern physics experiments that generate lots of data. This chip, the QIE9, designed by Fermilab engineers, is just one example of the many Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) used in such experiments.

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