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10/01/09

Crashing the size barrier

Like surfers on monster waves, electrons can ride waves of plasma to very high energies in a very short distance. Scientists have proven that plasma acceleration works.

10/01/09

LabFest

In August, robots, mummies, and giant jellyfish took over Chicago's Millennium Park. Fortunately, the invasion was peaceful—just part of the fun at the latest LabFest, a kind of pumped-up, hands-on outdoor science fair aimed to engage Chicagoans in the excitement of science.

08/01/09

Weak neutral current

The Gargamelle collaboration at the European laboratory CERN began operating its bubble chamber in the early 1970s, shooting neutrinos through 12,000 liters of Freon, a heavy liquid.

08/01/09

Superconducting technology, Chicago style

Fermilab is cooking up a hot technology—and the serving is ultracold. The laboratory is stepping up efforts to develop and test superconducting radio-frequency cavities, a key technology for the next generation of particle accelerators and the future of particle physics.

08/01/09

Not a moment to lose at the LHC

The eyes of the world were on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN on September 10, 2008. On that day, dubbed "Big Bang Day" by the BBC, the first beams of subatomic particles zoomed around the 17-mile-long, super-cooled particle accelerator.

08/01/09

Dancing with physicists

For her latest work, choreographer Liz Lerman took members of her dance troupe to CERN, where they reveled in the fog, danced in the aisles and found inspiration in wide-ranging conversations with scientists.

08/01/09

Welcome to CERNland

Alberto sits down at a computer and brings up a clickable map of CERN. But rather than dry text, he is greeted with bright, musical animation, a pinball game, a quiz show, rocket ships, evil slugs, and music videos.