As physicists have delved deeper and deeper into nature’s mysteries, they have been forced to accept the unsettling fact that our universe is suspiciously fine-tuned to support life.
No one is able to claim credit for the ancient wooden sign that hangs on the porch of the old Positron Electron Project buildings at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
In August 2006, scientists working on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at CERN conducted a Cosmic Challenge to test components of their 12,500-ton CMS particle detector.
The Terascale is an energy region named for the tera, or million million, electronvolts of energy needed to access it. Physicists are standing at its threshold, poised to enter this uncharted territory of the subatomic world.
‘Tis the season for science at the bottom of the Earth. Researchers are flying to the South Pole from all over the globe to take advantage of the “ warm” summer months, when temperatures average minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit.
They started out scanning the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence with SETI@ home. They’ve plotted chess moves, battled malaria, and folded proteins, all from their home computers. Now, volunteers are tackling particle physics with LHC@home.