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How I spent my summer learning about enigmatic particles that pass right through me by the billions every second!

Theoretical physicist James D. “BJ” Bjorken, theoretical physicist at SLAC and Stanford, passed away on Aug. 6. He was born in Chicago and in 1979, he left the SLAC and Stanford faculties to become associate director for physics at the Fermilab, saying he wanted to learn more about the accelerator side of things

There are patterns seen in quarks and leptons that remain unexplained, but it can be hypothesized that quarks and leptons might be created of still smaller particles. Does the Standard Model allow for an even smaller layer of matter to exist?

Fermilab scientists have taken a major step in preparing for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment with a prototype particle accelerator. The 2×2 detector prototype has four liquid argon modules arranged in a square whereas the DUNE detectors will have 35 liquid argon time projection chambers, allowing scientists to track the movements of particles and determine their physical properties.

Listen to the podcast story of Dr. Helen Edwards, who was a Fermilab particle physicist who led the design and construction of the Tevatron to probe deeper into the atom than anyone had gone before.

Neutrinos were first detected by Los Alamos researchers in 1956 and today very little is known about these elusive particles. Today, Los Alamos is part of the international collaboration of DUNE which aims to launch the most intense neutrino beam in the world.

Fermilab has twin laboratories that will probe superconducting qubits: QUIET is a new detector 100 meters underground and its counterpart is on the surface called LOUD, which began operations in 2022. The differences between the two detectors’ observations will allow researchers to assess how cosmic radiation affects qubit performance.

Sudhir Malik reports on an initiative by the US CMS collaboration to increase opportunities for under-represented students in high-energy physics.

The unusually large Muon has threatened the Standard Model for decades, but new data parks the particle inside the confines of established physics. The BMW Collaboration’s recently posted research suggests the difference between the muon’s predicted anomalous magnetic moment and that predicted by the Standard Model is not as large as previous findings suggested.

NPR’s Short Wave host spoke with Fermilab Cosmologist Brian Nord about what dark energy could be and what it implies about the end of our universe.