Skip to main content

latest news

Explain it in 60 Seconds: Lattice QCD

07/25/24

Lattice gauge theory, or lattice QCD, is a calculation method that helps scientists make predictions about the behavior of quarks at low energies.

08/01/08

Bonnie and the ArgoNeuTs

Inspired by heroes of Greek mythology, physicists are on a quest to find a cheaper, more efficient way to capture neutrinos—one of the strangest and most fascinating particles in the universe.

08/01/08

Pécub's Cup

A Faraday Cup is (pick one) 1) a gadget named after the great experimentalist Michael Faraday, used to measure the current of a charged-particle beam, or 2) an award that recognizes the inventors of innovative instruments for particle accelerators.

08/01/08

A bumper crop of physics plates

In our October/November issue, we asked readers to share stories and photographs of physics-related license plates. Here are the responses.

08/01/08

Gamma-rays inspire brass quintet

When you hear the descending flurry of 16th notes in the trumpets, you know the gamma rays are coming. They speed toward the detector in the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope in chromatically harmonized notes.

08/01/08

COUPP bubble chamber

Donald Glaser of the University of California, Berkeley, won a Nobel Prize for inventing the bubble chamber in 1952 as a way of detecting subatomic particles. Now a University of Chicago professor, Juan Collar, is leading the charge to make the bubble chamber cool and cutting-edge again.

08/01/08

Mr. Freeze

Some days Jerry Zimmerman calmly follows his typical morning routine and joins countless other suburbanites on the road to work. Then there are the other days. Those days Zimmerman takes on an alter-persona.

08/01/08

Rat rod

Parked between a shiny green Camaro and a remodeled '63 Mustang, a 1929 Ford Model A pickup-turned-hot rod is a mosaic of rust and rot. A rag plugs the radiator, and ancient wooden slats border the truck bed.

08/01/08

Call of the bike

As Reid Mumford pedals, sometimes he thinks about how to break away from the pack. Other times he thinks about how the smallest bits of the universe break apart in high-energy collisions.