A million Russian artillery shells helped scientists discover the Higgs boson. And all over the world, remnants of World War II weapons are built into the most mysterious experiments in physics.
In the mid-1990s, physicists needed tons of a metal strong enough to withstand the massive magnetic fields of the house-sized…
You might flee from words like “quarks,” “relativity,” and “joule,” but you shouldn’t have to, and neither should a kid. A new children’s book from the folks at a few of our national labs will hopefully make the things particle physicists are talking about easier to digest.
Fermilab outside Chicago will soon begin its Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), and what it hopes to accomplish is as brilliant and confusing as the book of its namesake.
Fermilab’s Tevatron collider officially retired in 2011 after a long and glorious history of scientific discovery. But the data from its final run is still yielding potentially exciting results. Physicists from the DZero collaboration have announced the discovery of a new particle, believed to be part of an exotic…
A controversial experiment at Fermilab designed to hunt for signs that our universe may really be a hologram has failed to find the evidence it was seeking, the laboratory has announced.
Last year, a massive, 17-ton, 52-foot wide electromagnet was successfully shipped from Long Island to Illinois. This week, it hit another milestone: It was successfully chilled to negative 450 Fahrenheit temps after 10 years’ inactivity, proving it’s ready to solve a whole new decade’s physics mysteries.
The Tevatron collider—the world’s second most powerful particle accelerator—was shut down in 2011. Now, from beyond the grave, it’s revealing properties of the Higgs boson.
It may not possess the sense of overwhelming grandeur that CERN can muster, but Fermilab's new 500-mile long neutrino experiment is just as ambitious. Leveraging the most powerful accelerator-based neutrino experiment ever built in the United States, researchers hope to unravel subatomic secrets and, through them,…
Although it sounds entirely like something dreamed up in a smoke-filled dorm room, whether the entire universe is hologram is a very serious question—a question that gets at the heart of a fundamental problem in physics. A new experiment starting up at Fermilab just might hold the answer.
The Department of Energy's Fermilab is building a gargantuan detector to examine uncharged subatomic neutrinos that can blast through the earth unimpeded. The 14,000-ton detector in Minnesota will capture neutrinos shot from a cannon over 500 miles away. Watch how they build a huge catcher's mitt for subatomic…
Given how rarely neutrinos interact with other elementary particles, they're notoriously difficult to study and consequently, our understanding of these electrically neutral subatomic entities remains rather sketchy. However, the Department of Energy's famed Fermilab in Batavia, IL aims to unlock these particles'…
Author James Rollins has been compared to Michael Crichton, and his latest book The Eye of God includes biohacking, DIY mad science and other current ideas. In this essay, he talks about visiting Fermilab and explains the secrets of transforming science into a cracking good read.
Just because Fermilab shut off its famous Tevartron back in 2011 doesn't mean the entire facility closed down with it. In fact, the Chicago-area physics lab is embarking on an auspicious plan to develop some of the world's most powerful proton beam technology by the end of the decade. But first, researchers have to…
While the Large Hadron Collider is looking for the Higgs boson, we're on the verge of two huge antimatter-related breakthroughs. One could finally solve the universe's oldest mystery, while the other could reveal strange new particles that are perfect for quantum computers.
The Tevatron shut down yesterday. Before its duties were taken up by the the Large Hadron Collider, it accelerated highly charged particles through 4 miles of electromagnetic coil and vacuum tubes to discover the secrets of the universe. How do you turn a beast like that off?
When Fermilab's Tevatron came online in 1983, it was the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. Since then, the collider has made countless contributions to the field of particle physics — the most notable being its role in the 1995 discovery of the top quark, the last of the six quarks in the Standard Model…
Once again, there's excitement in the physics community about the possible discovery of the Higgs boson. But this time, it's multiple discoveries...both experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have detected some intriguing possibilities, as has Fermilab's Tevatron. What's going on?
Fermilab believed they hit the motherlode this past April after findings from the Tevatron particle accelerator suggested a new subatomic particle was out there. A second, independent group has analyzed that same data and claim there is no new particle.
One of the two research teams at Fermilab has been on the trail of a new subatomic particle for months, and they're almost certain they've found it. But the other research team has just checked the data...and they've found nothing.
Back in April, Fermilab physicists detected a strange bump in their data that couldn't be explained by any known particles. The mystery remains unsolved, and it's looking more and more likely that we're on the verge of a major discovery.
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