Since the discovery of the Higgs Boson (or, more infamously, the “God Particle”) in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) based at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), particle physicists have sought to expand their ability to probe Nature’s deepest secrets. Although the Higgs was the last missing piece of the Standard Model
Physics
By Leah Poffenberger Artist’s representation of Pōniuāʻena. IMAGE CREDIT: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Marenfeld Looking up at the night sky stars is a bit like going to a history museum: The light we see is giving us a glimpse into the past. When light is emitted from a star, it has to travel across the galaxy
By: Hannah Pell “The American Physical Society (APS) has a vision of the future of physics publishing, in 2020 or so.” So begins a 1993 Science article titled “Publication by Electronic Mail Takes Physics by Storm.” Burton Richter, then-president of APS and former head of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), elaborated: “Any physicist, any
Ximena Cid (second from left) stands with students in front of a mural on the CSUDH campus. Credit: CSUDH By Korena Di Roma Howley As a young girl growing up in Sacramento, California, Ximena Cid would sit on her roof and stare at the night sky. “I always had a love of the stars, of
The Case for Fahrenheit vs Celsius in terms of human comfort. By Allison Kubo Hutchison Scientists have to know how to speak the languages of many units. Improper unit conversions have caused much heartache and suffering in the past, including the loss of a $125 million dollar Mars orbiter. In general, peer-reviewed science journals only
By: Hannah Pell Graphic from shutdownSTEM.com. Recently I started rereading When Physics Became King by Iwan Rhys Morus, a historian of science at Aberystwyth University in Wales. Published in 2005, Morus traces the development of physics through the nineteenth century, as the field gradually evolved from its roots in natural philosophy and mathematics to later
By Leah Poffenberger Everyday life is full of choices: Coffee or tea? Apples or oranges? iPhone or Android? We also have to tackle more serious questions, like who to vote for in an election. Especially for the important choices in our lives, these decisions don’t happen in a vacuum: We’re usually getting a lot of
One night in late April, my husband happened to look out the window and noticed, passing over our valley in southwest Montana, a string of around 30 mysterious lights—too fast to be aircraft and apparently too numerous to be satellites. The next day, a string of emails lit up a local listserv. People who’d observed
3 Groundbreaking Experiments Happening Aboard the ISS Right Now https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/christina-koch-activates-the-new-biofabrication-facility NASA astronaut Christina Koch activates the BioFabrication Facility aboard the ISS in August 2019. Credit: NASA Astronauts often leave Earth with plenty of fanfare, but spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS) also routinely carry components for on-orbit experimentation, known as payloads. These systems
Imagine a world where everyone is right-handed. The world may not look different, but eventually, the question might arise: Why is no one left-handed? In the world of the molecules that make up the bodies of living things like DNA and RNA, this is a real question—and astrophysics researchers think they might have an answer.
The essence of the perfect slice of sourdough bread is in the air right now. It is even on your hands. The heart of the sourdough is the starter, a fermented culture of flour and water. The sour flavor of the dough comes from lactic acid bacteria (LAB) who live in relative harmony and competition
Combatting the COVID-19 pandemic has become an international challenge and charge. It has highlighted the positive consequences of science operating on a global scale. It has shown how answers can be found quickly when scientists share results at unprecedented speed and research becomes increasingly open-access. It has shown that we must rely on scientists from