This doodle pad was used by Columbia University researcher Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee during talks with Chen Ning (Frank) Yang, while they were visiting scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the summer of 1956.
Whereas matter on Earth and in stars is made of atoms and nuclei, scientists know that dark matter must be made of something else. Neutralinos are a prime candidate.
Marek Zreda and Darin Desilets of the University of Arizona approached airport security with a suitcase full of tubing, cables, electronic devices, and wires. The guard opened it. Lights started blinking.
There are many ways to deliver a clever play on words: deliberately with a nudge, coyly with a wink, or tossed nonchalantly into a conversation to trigger a delayed laugh—or a groan.
Bluish lights flash on a grassy field, like giant fireflies angling for mates—sometimes a single flash, sometimes a ripple of light moving fast, as if suitors have given chase. Then all 16 lights flash at once, and the whole field glows.
At SLAC's Linear Café, a potato doesn't just go on your fork. It is your fork. The cafeteria began a green initiative about five months ago, abandoning traditional plastic spoons and plates in favor of biodegradable counterparts.
If someone had told me when I was in high school that one day I would meet Stephen Hawking and have a meeting at NASA, I never could've guessed the trajectory I'd follow to get there. I would've assumed I had become a physicist.
Jorge Cham's popular comic strip about the lives of hapless grad students takes him to the Large Hadron Collider—and launches a series of comics that explains the science with remarkable clarity.