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12/08/16

A syllabus in cosmic rays

What have scientists learned in five years of studying cosmic rays with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment?

The 2×2 prototype detector for the DUNE near detector was placed in its cryostat in October 2023

DUNE scientists observe first neutrinos with prototype detector at Fermilab

08/12/24

The prototype of a novel particle detection system for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment successfully recorded its first accelerator neutrinos.

03/01/05

I have heard conflicting reports as to who decided to call one of the most spectacular intellectual innovations of human history "the Standard Model," physicists' best construct for explaining the range and behavior of elementary particles that make up the universe as we know it.

03/01/05

Good-natured community relations

Working at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, you never know what projects may come your way. So when Helen Quinn, head of education outreach at SLAC, asked me to plant trees with a class of fourth graders, I said sure, it's not rocket science.

Illustration of dancers without partners

03/01/05

Supersymmetry

Supersymmetry is a proposed property of the universe.

03/01/05

The growth of e-printing

Before the days of the World Wide Web, scientists would mail their colleagues preprints, hard copies of papers submitted to scientific journals. In 1991, particle physicists began posting these papers on the Web, calling them e-prints.

02/01/05

Special relativity

Einstein had promised but later refused to publish this 1912 expository treatise, his earliest known manuscript on special relativity. No original manuscripts survive for the articles of Einsteins 1905 annus mirabilis.

02/01/05

Night shift

Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, a crew of four to five operators plus a crew chief are on shift in Fermilab's Main Control Room, monitoring the accelerator complex.

02/01/05

Beyond the Standard Model

At almost any particle physics conference, meeting, or lunch table, the phrase "physics beyond the Standard Model" is heard over and over again. What's wrong with the Standard Model, anyway? Why are physicists so sure that there is something beyond it?

02/01/05

Einstein vs. Godzilla: The Green Guy Wins

So who's this Einstein guy I keep hearing about? He writes these five papers a hundred years ago, and now the whole world wants a year to glorify him? Booshwah, I say.

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