Symmetry

Physics courses have a reputation among university students: If you don’t do well, then you probably weren’t meant to study science after all. Studies have shown that those who face the worst consequences from this mentality are those who are already less likely to be found in many STEM fields: women, underrepresented minorities and students from low-income backgrounds. The SEISMIC project aims to make introductory STEM courses successful for everyone.

For the first time, the LHCb collaboration at CERN has observed an exotic particle made up of four charm quarks.

Hadrons count among their number the familiar protons and neutrons that make up our atoms, but they are much more than that.

The discovery of the muon originally confounded physicists. Today international experiments are using the previously perplexing particle to gain a new understanding of our world.

We know that neutrinos aren’t massless, they’re just incredibly light — a million times lighter than the next lightest particle, the electron. And they don’t seem to get their mass in the same way as other particles in the Standard Model.

A sourdough family started at Fermilab by a graduate student visiting from Texas A&M has continued to expand and flourish.

Physicists are finding ways to contribute to projects related to epidemiology, diagnosis, treatment, supporting healthcare systems and studying public sentiment.

Physicist Cristiano Galbiati shifted focus from the search for dark matter to the shortage of ventilators for COVID-19 patients. The collaboration he began created an easy-to-manufacture ventilator in less than two months.

Experimentalists and theorists search for Higgs bosons escaping as dark matter.

The group Science Responds harnesses physicists’ expertise in fields like data science, statistics and software development to support efforts to fight COVID-19.