Search
Experimental Design
The neutrino is the most ghostly, rarely-interacting particle in all the Standard Model. How well can we truly make "beams" out of them?
Experimental archaeology is the practice of recreating past events using knowledge and tools available at the time. Sometimes, it involves elephants.
Crystallization is an entirely random process, so scientists have developed clever ways to investigate it at a molecular level.
Time isn't the same for everyone, even on Earth. Flying around the world gave Einstein the ultimate test. No one is immune from relativity.
Fermilab's TeVatron just released the best mass measurement of the W-boson, ever. Here's what doesn't add up.
The good news is that scientists have found a new way to treat eczema. The bad news is that it's drinkable dust mite extract.
At a fundamental level, nobody knows whether gravity is truly quantum in nature. A novel experiment strongly hints that it is.
Particle physics needs a new collider to supersede the Large Hadron Collider. Muons, not electrons or protons, might hold the key.
The Miller-Urey experiment showed that the building blocks of life could form in the primordial soup. But it overlooked one key variable.
More energy means more potential for discovery, but we’re topped out. If your goal is to discover something completely novel, you have to look in a way that no one else […]
The mismatch between theory and experiment is anything but certain. The most exciting moments in a scientist’s life occur when you get a result that defies your expectations. Whether you’re a […]
We still don’t know what dark matter is, but at least we now know what it’s not. When it comes to science, we often say that it only takes a single […]
If you think it’s just three quarks held together by gluons, you’ll want to read this. At a fundamental level, the Universe is composed of indivisible particles. From macroscopic scales down […]
Being a small piece of a large experiment is vital to the enterprise of science. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work as a small (but vital) part of […]
You never know what you’re going to find when you look somewhere new for the first time. Approximately 4600 feet (1400 meters) underground, beneath the Italian mountain known as Gran Sasso, […]
The double-slit experiment, all these years later, still holds the key mystery at the heart of quantum physics. When we divide up matter into the smallest possible chunks that it’s made […]
Particle physics is everywhere, even in the palm of your hand. When you hold out your palm and point it towards the sky, what is it that’s interacting with your hand? […]
Just because you can design an experiment to test for something doesn’t mean you should trust the results. Is there another Universe out there? The Universe we know and inhabit, the […]
Hunting for dark matter, neutrinos, and other elusive signals isn’t just a satisfying endeavor, it’s a way of life for Dr. Laura Manenti. We know that there’s more to the Universe […]
It’s been over 100 years since Einstein, and over 300 since Newton. We’ve still got a long way to go. From measuring how objects fall on Earth to observing the motion […]
A well-deserved award for the discovery over a century in the making. “Well, I walked into Building 20 and looked in at the various little labs. There was a bunch of […]
Sometimes, designing a careful experiment and measuring absolutely no effect can be the most important result of all. “It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any […]
An awful op-ed about how science is no different than other disciplines misses some fundamental facts. “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” […]