A former physicist uses accelerator data to create artistic visualizations.

Sixteen years after graduating as a nuclear physicist, following a long period of working as a digital designer and educator, Andres Wanner again immersed himself in a physics environment at TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. Midway through a second Masters degree in Visual Arts, he was curious to revisit his scientific past from a different, artistic perspective.

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When weather prevented other telescopes from tracking a potentially hazardous asteroid, the Dark Energy Camera stepped in.

For seven minutes earlier this month, two Fermilab physicists moonlighted as astronomers who, like the Men in Black, were positioned to protect the Earth from the scum of the universe.

On February 3, Alex Drlica-Wagner and Steve Kent were in Chile taking data for the Dark Energy Survey when they received an email stating that a satellite telescope had picked up signs of a potentially hazardous asteroid, one whose orbit might soon meet with Earth’s.

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Fermilab's CDF and DZero experiments have discovered the last predicted way to produce the top quark, the heaviest elementary particle.

Scientists on the CDF and DZero experiments at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have found the final predicted way of creating a top quark, completing a picture of this particle nearly 20 years in the making.

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With a deadly embrace, ‘spidery’ pulsars devour their partners. One such pulsar is the first rapidly spinning black widow to be discovered using only gamma rays. Black widow spiders and their Australian cousins, known as redbacks, are not... Continue reading →

Michelangelo D’Agostino taps his physics ingenuity daily as a data scientist.

Michelangelo D’Agostino took a few forays into the world outside particle physics before confidently switching to a career in data science, where he exercises his physics muscles to generate results in politics, business and societal issues like energy and health.

“I love being able to use my statistical and programming skills in an environment where you can quickly see the impact that you're having on the world,” D’Agostino says.

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At SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, researchers are using a particle accelerator to help them search for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.

In a test facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, scientists have set the stage for an experiment that mimics what happens when incredibly energetic particles hit our atmosphere. The experiment should help them learn to use a new method of detecting these particles—with radio waves.

The undertaking requires the lab’s historic linear accelerator, 3000 pounds of white plastic blocks, giant radio antennas and a set of powerful magnetic coils.

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Twenty years after a cutting-edge particle physics experiment at SLAC adopted a royal elephant from a series of children's books as its mascot, BaBar (the experiment, not the elephant) is still looking ahead to future discoveries.

In the two decades since its formal inception, the particle physics experiment known as BaBar has gone far beyond its original scientific goal: studying charge-parity violation, which is one method the universe uses to play favorites by showing a preference for matter over antimatter.

But the agenda of BaBar’s 20th anniversary collaboration meeting in Frascati, Italy, last December, did not consist of three days of researchers patting themselves on the back. They were too busy preparing further data analyses and future proposals.

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Olympic downhill skier Dominique Gisin, who tied for gold in Sochi, is a fan of particle physics.

This week, Swiss skier Dominique Gisin dashed through a 1.7-mile course into an unprecedented tie for the gold in the woman’s downhill event at the Sochi Winter Olympics.

But Gisin’s need for speed goes beyond the slopes. In 2009, the Swiss TV show Sportpanorama gave Gisin—who had just won two International Ski Federation World Cup downhill victories—the chance to pick one of a large variety of exciting activities. She chose to visit CERN, home of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator.

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