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09/01/07

Theory

Theories describe scientists’ understanding of observed phenomena.

09/01/07

The end of the HERA era

Laughter punctuates the excited conversations, a mix of German and English. Drinks are passed around and children dart among the legs of the hundred or so scientists gathered together for one last time. The sky’s blue is deepening: only 90 minutes until sunset.

09/01/07

From rivets to ribbits

An impromptu frog habitat vanished with final repairs to the roof of Fermilab's Meson Lab. Leaks—lots of leaks—have plagued the lab's 12 blue and orange concave arches since it opened 32 years ago.

09/01/07

HERAfest

On June 29, 2007, when Albrecht Wagner told an assembly of nearly 1800 people to go to lunch and return at 2 p.m. for a surprise, nobody could have expected what was coming.

09/01/07

The art of the unseen

As technology evolves, posters are getting easier to produce and pass around. But it still takes skill and imagination to illustrate the abstract ideas of physics.

08/01/07

Plutonium

Atomic element 94 was named “plutonium” after Pluto, the ninth planet from the Sun (now demoted to “minor planet” status.) By tradition, plutonium should have been assigned the symbol “Pl,” but co-discoverer Glenn Seaborg gave it the symbol “Pu” as

08/01/07

Particle search on a shoestring

When Aaron Chou heard about an experiment in Italy that suggested the existence of an exotic particle as a candidate for dark matter, he was intrigued enough to go looking for it. His first stop: the Fermilab cafeteria.