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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?

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Conceptual illustration of cosmic rays with students in the background

Students become scientists on International Cosmic Day

10/01/24

Chris Patrick

Every November, students, teachers and scientists worldwide gather virtually to learn about Earth’s cosmic visitors.

02/01/05

The growing relationship of astrophysics and particle physics is a hot topic these days. In addition to the appearance of new faces and institutions at the labs, the growth of this area of research can actually be seen in the references of particle physics papers.

01/01/05

Inflation

In 1978 Alan Guth heard about the “flatness problem” of the universe while attending a talk on cosmology—a field he was only marginally curious about. A year later, Guth found a solution.

01/01/05

R. Keith Ellis and Thomas Ludlam: Strong interaction

The discovery of asymptotic freedom did not mean that Quantum Chromodynamics was immediately accepted as the theory of the strong interaction.

01/01/05

Data by the boxload

How many CDs are in the box? "100," a child guessed. "1000," said another. The answer was 2000, the equivalent of just 0.1 percent of the database capabilities at SLAC. "Imagine 2 million CDs in your bedroom."

01/01/05

Gravitational lenses

Gravitational lenses distort light and help scientists study dark matter.

01/01/05

Seiching

Maori lore says that the rising and falling of the water level in Lake Wakatipu every 51 minutes is due to the breathing of the giant sleeping beneath.

01/01/05

Fine-tune this

Quick, what's 987654321 divided by 123456789? The answer is close to 8, but not exactly 8. Why does the result differ by about a tenth of a million, yielding 8.0000000729...?

01/01/05

Dawn Meson: Orders of magnitude

From cave paintings of bison to Monet landscapes, artists have studied and interpreted the natural world. Dawn Neal Meson, a San Francisco artist, has taken this theme one level further, or, rather, many orders of magnitude smaller.

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