Blackboards filled with mathematical equations and scientific machines as large as cathedrals can awe, and sometimes overwhelm. But Koosh balls are another matter.
In May 1983, physicists on the UA1 detector for the Super Proton Synchrotron accelerator at CERN made the first definitive observations of the Z boson.
Jason Steffen waited to board a plane in the Seattle airport. He waited to get his boarding pass scanned. Then he walked a few steps down the jet way, and waited some more. His frustration grew.
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.
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.