A joint Fermilab/SLAC publication

latest news

09/10/18
Stanford University

Is our universe one of many?

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.

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Conceptual illustration of a pie with a lattice crust

Explain it in 60 Seconds: Lattice QCD

07/25/24
Sarah Charley

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

02/01/08

Notes from the underworld

They had braved Parisian catacombs, gloomy dungeons, and shipwrecks. Yet as the elevator dropped 360 feet into a cavernous hall at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, uncertainty flickered across the faces of the globe-trotting television crew.

Logbook of December 2007
12/01/07

CMS cosmic challenge

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.

12/01/07

Entering Higgs habitat

A powerful new collider will allow scientists to explore the territory where the long-sought Higgs particle—maybe even a whole family of them—resides.

12/01/07

Life among the physics tribes

Meeting in CERN’s Restaurant 1, anthropologist Arpita Roy of the University of California, Berkeley is quick to declare that she will not be having any more coffee today. She has begun drinking multiple cups per day as she meets with CERN physicists to learn about their work.

Simulation showing a spray of particles created in a particle collision
12/01/07

Protecting the LHC from itself

Scientists at CERN have crafted the world’s most sophisticated machine protection system to save the LHC from itself.

12/01/07

Spartan software

Every time Fermilab scientist Tom Schwarz starts up SpartyJet, he inwardly grimaces. The computer program works well. It does a fine job of finding and recording jets—sprays of subatomic particles that emerge from collisions involving protons.

12/01/07

LHC cabling

It’s heavy, dusty, dirty work: Deep in the bowels of the LHC detectors, workers are rushing to connect a rat’s nest of cables.

An illustration depicting scale differences
12/01/07

Terascale

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.

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