A detector that was designed to probe dark matter has seen an elusive nuclear decay called two-neutrino double electron capture—with implications for nuclear and particle physics.
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.
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.
On April 28, 1947 Stanford Linear Electron Accelerator Project Report No. 7 announced the realization of a dream 15 years in the making: the linear acceleration of electrons.
Long after the hard shaking stops, an earthquake's seismic waves reverberate around the world, imperceptibly rocking the ground. As one seismologist puts it, a great earthquake causes every grain of sand on Earth to dance.
Since its launch in June 2008, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has shed light on some of the brightest, most explosive events in the universe and opened tantalizing windows into dark matter and the nature of space-time.
Canning, pickling, drying, freezing -- physicists wish there were an easy way to preserve their hard-won data so future generations of scientists, armed with more powerful tools, can take advantage of it. They've launched an international search for solutions.
Every so often, particle physics communicators from labs around the world gather to swap strategies for getting people interested in science. At the group's April meeting in Japan, the big hit was toilet paper.