Read article 'Lessons learnt from the heavy tau lepton'
A quarter of a century ago, Martin Perl discovered a new particle: the tau lepton. This weakly interacting particle is so heavy that it can decay into strongly interacting particles and provide very ...
Read article 'Physics in a cold climate'
This brief excerpt from the foreword of a new book of lectures in theoretical physics by Misha Shifman gives a penetrating insight into the traditions of Russian physics and the life of a theoretical ...
Read article 'Deciphering the enigma of elastic scattering'
Understanding most of what happens in high-energy particle scattering should be easy, but it isn't. A recent international conference underlined a traditional dilemma.
Read article '40 years of CERN’s Proton Synchrotron'
CERN's Proton Synchrotron achieved its first high-energy beams 40 years ago. The pioneers at CERN had dared to follow a new, untested route in a bid to become the world's highest energy machine. Now, ...
Read article 'Radioactive beams drive physics forward'
Radioactive ion beams provide access to a variety of research, from basic nuclear physics to the life sciences. Thomas Nilsson looks at the varied radioactive ion beam research programme of CERN's vet...
Read article 'Handling high-energy spin'
The discovery of spin was a surprise, and the subsequent history of spin physics has lived up to this reputation. With plenty of spin puzzles still around, physicists have to look at how to handle sp...
Read article 'Silver celebration for Swiss pions'
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first particle beams at the former Swiss Institute for Nuclear Research, now better known as the Paul Scherrer Institute.
Read article 'LEP pursues Higgs boson and greater W precision'
While we wait for a definitive sighting of the enigmatic Higgs particle, there is no lack of careful precision work for the experiments at CERN's LEP electronpositron collider. Bob Clare of MIT look...
Read article 'CERN gears up for deceleration'
Antiprotons have been a highlight of close-of-the-century physics. CERN's Antiproton Decelerator will continue this tradition into the 21st century.
Read article 'Zen and the art of low-energy antiproton experiments'
A recent workshop in Japan set the scene for a range of experiments at CERN's AD machine, which will synthesize and explore atoms of antimatter. John Eades reports.
