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08/01/06

Fire-fighting foam

When the CERN safety team and I heard the loud rumbling 25 meters underground, we weren't concerned. With no warning, it would have been frightening, but the rush of water through pipes overhead presaged a thrilling event.

08/01/06

Into a new world of physics and symmetry

The worldwide particle physics community is about to sail on a voyage into a New World of discovery. The Large Hadron Collider, a multi-billion-dollar particle collider that will begin operations in Europe in 2007, will take us into new realms of energy, space, time, and symmetry.

08/01/06

From swords to plowshares

Despite struggling through economic failure during the 1990s, Russia's devotion to scientific collaboration in high-energy physics has grown stronger.

08/01/06

Extracting physics from the LHC

A proton travels around a 27-kilometer ring at nearly the speed of light. Along with a bunch of other protons, it passes through the hearts of each of a series of detectors more than ten thousand times per second. Then, on one pass, it slams into a proton coming from the other direction.

07/01/06

First vertex detector

The Positron Electron Project (PEP) collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center produced its first collisions in 1979. All sorts of particles burst out, including the tau lepton, an ephemeral cousin of the electron.

07/01/06

The particle garden

Mesons. Bosons. Pions. Muons. Asparagus. Yes, asparagus. Physicists have spare time, too, and a few of them spend it in Fermilab's Garden Club, with roots almost as old as the lab itself.