Science is an international activity. It is elementary that communication and collaboration among scientists promote scientific progress. No group has a monopoly on good ideas.
The modern age of science was born in a system of patronage and independently wealthy hobbyists pursuing questions that would satisfy their curiosity or fill their pocketbooks.
On October 19, 1991, at 6:50 p.m., Bjørn Wiik logged the first collisions in the new electron-proton particle collider at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg.
We asked you to use Roz Chast’s cover of the May issue of symmetry as inspiration to go beyond the elementary particles already discovered or theorized and tell us about the particles of your dreams. The dozens of responses were clever, funny, and insightful.
Men and women wearing gaudy dresses, looking for customers under garish neon signs—this is a common sight in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku, a famous entertainment and red-light district in Tokyo, Japan.
Search for “BaBar” on YouTube.com, and you'll get a long list of links to a 1980s TV series based on an animated elephant. But a surprise is hidden among the cartoons—a six-minute film shot in the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center's BaBar control room.
What is the universe made of? What are matter, energy, space, and time? How did we get here and where are we going? In particle physics, the classic place to look for answers is in giant accelerators where particles collide. But nature also provides a wealth of data.
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.
The late 1970s were a special time for me. The radio played disco, George Lucas released the first of the Star Wars movies and Alice Waters, at her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, was shaping a cuisine featuring fresh, local ingredients.
To artist and engineer Amy Lee Segami, water is no ordinary substance—it is her canvas. Using her knowledge of fluid mechanics, Segami paints on water in a contemporary version of the ancient Asian art form of Suminagashi.
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.
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.
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.
