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.
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.
Chugging along in the background, old physics machines are the workhorses behind many cutting-edge projects, from the world's most powerful X-ray laser to the Large Hadron Collider and a lab that tests microchips bound for Mars.
How do you make the invisible visible? Astrophysicists face this challenge daily. Unlike astronomers who view stars through telescopes, astrophysicists study cosmic particles that are too small or dark to see directly.
What opera and physics may have in common, more than anything else, is their tendency to make most people cringe or fall asleep. Can an avant-garde opera that compares self-exploration to the physics of multiple dimensions invigorate audiences?