Physics beyond the imaginable

Wiping with the stars

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.

May the fundamental forces be with you

A long time ago in a national laboratory far, far away… some physicists looked around their workplace and thought of dark forces. Not dark matter; not dark energy; but the ultimate force from the dark side: Darth Vader.

Antiproton discovery

When the Bevatron switched on at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the fall of 1954, it was the largest particle accelerator ever built, capable of producing energies upwards of six billion electronvolts.

Intensity Frontier

Cleaner living through electrons

Studies show that blasts of electrons from a particle accelerator are an effective way to clean up dirty water, nasty sewage sludge, and polluted gases from smokestacks. Now researchers need to make the technology more compact and reliable.

Shrinking the cost of zapping cancer

Dejan Trbojevic's work on one of the world's largest particle accelerators helped him think small.

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.

Science Express pulls a carload of particle physics

When designers laid out their vision for an educational train called the Science Express, they almost left particle physics standing on the platform.