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How do scientists get lead into the LHC?

01/28/25

Sarah Charley

Once a year, the Large Hadron Collider smashes lead ions. But how do scientists get a heavy metal into a particle accelerator?

Illustration of impossible staircase of discovery

04/27/21

Dark matter’s signature could be written in stone

A proposed dark-matter detection method would look for tracks of dark matter etched into billion-year-old mineral samples.

Illustration: A Lakota star rises like the sun behind the Sanford lab area

04/20/21

Where science meets the sacred

Sanford Underground Research Facility is making an effort to build bridges with Native American communities and operate with respect for the sacred land it is built on.

Illustration highlighting some of the Xenon atom's journey

04/13/21

From the atmosphere to the underground

Read the travelogue of a xenon atom as it journeys from the air we breathe to a dark-matter detector a mile underground.

04/06/21

The next supercollider

What does it take to envision and build a seemingly impossible particle accelerator?

Illustration of a magnifying glass inspecting a fingerprint

03/30/21

The mystery of the muon’s magnetism

A super-precise experiment at Fermilab is carefully analyzing every detail of the muon’s magnetic moment.

Illustration: Identical people in two different t-shirts “collect” data

03/29/21

The data wranglers

A degree in particle physics or astrophysics can lead to a career in data science.

Illustration of cats representing correlated information inside and outside of a black hole

03/23/21

Has the black hole information paradox evaporated?

Researchers make progress on a vexing problem about how black holes evolve.

Illustration of two people prognosticating in front of the Standard Model

03/16/21

Six fabulous facts about the Standard Model

Learn about the Standard Model of particle physics and how physicists use it to predict the (subatomic) future.

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