With the Large Hadron Collider up and running, expectations are high: Shouldn't discoveries start pouring in? These things don't happen overnight. We trace the long, careful path from intriguing data to official discovery.
Scientists studying global warming hope to use dust buried in Antarctic ice formations to determine how fast the winds blew as many as 90,000 years ago.
In June 1998, Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo presented strong evidence that neutrinos behave differently than predicted by the Standard Model of particles: The three known types of neutrinos apparently transform into each other, a phenomenon known as oscillation.
Just before 7:30 on a bitter-cold morning in northern Minnesota, engineer Jim Beaty begins the last leg of his daily commute. He steps into a dark brown metal box with five coworkers. Someone slides the door closed.
Many towns have public science centers. But it's difficult to think of one so close to the geographic, spiritual, and cultural heart of a city as one being planned in L'Aquila, Italy.