Not only are neutrinos hard to catch, but they also change form as they travel through space. New experiments hope to understand their chameleonic nature.
The question before the high-energy physics community in the United States at this moment is nothing less than whether we will continue to be among the world leaders in this field.
Neutrinos are complicated little beasties--far more so than physicist Wolfgang Pauli could have imagined. He introduced them in 1930 as a theoretical hack to save the law of conservation of energy, which appeared to be violated in some newly observed particle interactions.
Waves describe some of the most extraordinary phenomena in the world. Waves can be simple—the sound of a flute playing a sustained, single note—or they can be complicated mixtures—a musical chord, for example, which is a combination of many sound waves.
On the night of April 27, 2002, the Apache Point 3.5 m telescope in New Mexico captured the light signature of SDSS 1148+5251, the most distant quasar known. A quasar is a compact, ultraluminous object thought to be powered by material falling into a giant black hole.
I noticed a small inaccuracy in the March 2005 article "X-ray Blaze on an Invisible World." Horse people among your readers will instantly recognize that the horse in the photograph "Sallie Gardner" is running, not trotting.
In January 2000, Tom Jordan had just finished up a conference in San Diego, where he had presented one of the new cosmic ray detectors to QuarkNet teachers.
The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, and the new CMS offices at Fermilab are separated only by the amount of time it takes light to travel between the two places.
In honor of the World Year of Physics, symmetry featured an Albert Einstein teddy bear on the cover of the February issue. Since then, we have received a steady stream of phone calls and email.
Every winter, pine trees on the KEK campus in Tsukuba, Japan, get a treat. Komomaki (woven-straw blankets) are wrapped around the pines a few feet above the ground.
Mario Calvetti of the University of Florence has been named the new director of Frascati National Laboratories by Italy's Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), marking a return to the origins of his scientific career.
Representation of women in physics is increasing but still lags behind other fields. A new study assesses the participation of women in physics over time and around the world.
In 1967, Don Young was among a handful of physicists working to turn a dream into the research institution that would become Fermilab. His first job found him in charge of building the linear accelerator—and then 30 years later, the Linac would help save his life.
Science education offers exceptional potential to ignite curiosity and cultivate creativity, and it's difficult to understand why the average US high school graduate lacks basic scientific literacy.
