Explain it in 60 Seconds: Lattice QCD

Jorge Cham: Piled higher and deeper

Jorge Cham's popular comic strip about the lives of hapless grad students takes him to the Large Hadron Collider—and launches a series of comics that explains the science with remarkable clarity.

Brian Malow: Science yuks

If someone had told me when I was in high school that one day I would meet Stephen Hawking and have a meeting at NASA, I never could've guessed the trajectory I'd follow to get there. I would've assumed I had become a physicist.

Electronic personalities

Some claim that handwriting can reveal personality traits. Large, free-flowing loops reflect an easy-going nature; squiggly strokes, creativity.

The contraption is just a dirt-dampness detector. Honest.

Marek Zreda and Darin Desilets of the University of Arizona approached airport security with a suitcase full of tubing, cables, electronic devices, and wires. The guard opened it. Lights started blinking.

Jessica Reed: Custodians of the strong force

Biodegradable Café

At SLAC's Linear Café, a potato doesn't just go on your fork. It is your fork. The cafeteria began a green initiative about five months ago, abandoning traditional plastic spoons and plates in favor of biodegradable counterparts.

Result of the week

Behind every big breakthrough is a series of small steps that build on each other to enhance our understanding of the universe. At Fermilab’'s Tevatron Collider, physicists have been telling the unfolding story of their experiments in weekly installments for more than five years.

Superconducting magnets

Today's MRI machines and particle accelerators wouldn’t exist without superconducting electromagnets, which generate powerful magnetic fields at a fraction of the energy cost of conventional electromagnets.