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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.

Illustration of a scientist knitting an image of a galaxy

04/25/24

Machine learning and experiment

For more than 20 years in experimental particle physics and astrophysics, machine learning has been accelerating the pace of science, helping scientists tackle problems of greater and greater complexity.

Conceptual illustration of a triangle loom

04/23/24

A collaborative ecosystem

Physicists work with computer scientists in academia and industry to advance machine learning.

Illustration of someone reading a physics vocabulary booklet

04/18/24

Physics vocabulary: AI edition

Don’t know your convolutional neural networks from your boosted decision trees? Symmetry is here to help.

$Conceptual illustration of wool being spun into refracted light$

04/17/24

Symmetry’s guide to AI in particle physics and astrophysics

In the coming weeks, Symmetry will explore the ways scientists are using artificial intelligence to advance particle physics and astrophysics—in a series of articles written and illustrated entirely by humans.

Illustration featuring a muon home run from the field of dreams

04/10/24

‘This is our Muon Shot’

The US physics community dreams of building a muon collider.

DESI has made the largest 3D map of our universe to date

04/04/24

First results from DESI make the most precise measurement of our expanding universe

With just its first year of data, DESI has surpassed all previous 3D spectroscopic maps combined and confirmed the basics of our best model of the universe.

04/03/24

SLAC completes construction of the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy

Once set in place atop a telescope in Chile, the 3,200-megapixel LSST Camera will help researchers better understand dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of our universe.

Illustration of a plane landing at the South Pole

03/26/24

A harsh environment for life, an ideal environment for research

The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel recently recommended, among their top priorities for the next decade, moving forward with two experiments based at the South Pole.

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