News and features

Is it possible that these fundamental building blocks of atoms have a finite lifetime?

For physicists, seeing is not always believing.

Finding a small discrepancy in measurements of the properties of neutrinos could show us how they fit into the bigger picture. One of those properties is a parameter called theta13. Theta13 relates deeply to how neutrinos mix together, and it’s here that scientists have seen the faintest hint of disagreement from different experiments.

Experiments at Fermilab and other laboratories are investigating neutrino oscillations in detail to discover the physics beyond the Standard Model.

Hear about the history of the prairie on Sept. 30 and join in the annual prairie harvest on Oct. 3 and Nov. 7

It survived a month-long journey over 3,200 miles, and now the delicate and complex electromagnet is well on its way to exploring the unknown. The Muon g-2 ring has successfully cooled down to operating temperature and powered up, proving that even after a decade of inactivity, it remains a vital and viable scientific instrument.

Scientists think that a Higgs force does exist. But it’s the Higgs boson’s relationship to that force that makes it a bit of a black sheep. It’s the reason that, when the Higgs is added to the Standard Model of particle physics, it’s often pictured apart from the rest of the boson family.

This year, the NSF is awarding grants to fund research on the development of bright beams at the University of Chicago and Northern Illinois University at a level of $680,000 and $560,000, respectively, for a three-year period.

The CMS and ATLAS experiments combined forces to more precisely measure properties of the Higgs boson. Sticking with the philosophy that two experiments are better than one, scientists from the ATLAS and CMS collaborations presented combined measurements of other Higgs properties at the third annual Large Hadron Collider Physics Conference in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Scientist Marcelle Soares-Santos talks about Brazil, neutron stars and a love of discovery.