Particles like the top quark weren’t the only characters to appear at Fermilab’s Tevatron. A physicist waxes nostalgic as scientists prepare to celebrate the accelerator’s contributions to science, technology and society at a symposium this month.
In Gran Sasso National Laboratory’s cavernous Hall B, beneath 1400 meters of rock, amongst huge detectors of neutrinos and dark matter, Italian actor Marco Paolini spoke. And more than one million people listened—and watched.
The muon—the short-lived cousin of the electron—could be the key to understanding relationships between other fundamental particles. And it holds a mystery all its own.
