In lead collisions at the LHC, some of the strongest electromagnetic fields in the universe bombard the inside of the beam pipe with radioactive gold. By following the collision fragments, John Jowett ...

Oliver James of DNEG, which produced the striking black hole in the film Interstellar, describes the science behind visual effects and the challenges in this fast-growing industry. Gargantua A variant ...

In the summer of 1968, while a visitor in CERN’s theory division, Gabriele Veneziano wrote a paper titled “Construction of a crossing-symmetric, Regge behaved amplitude for linearly-rising ...

Marek Karliner and Jonathan Rosner ask what makes tetraquarks and pentaquarks tick, revealing them to be at times exotic compact states, at times hadronic molecules and at times both – with much still ...

Alexander Lenz argues that the charm quark is an experimental and theoretical enigma that has the potential to shed light on the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Threading the needle The ...

Innovation in superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) technology and applications is fundamental for the success of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project and the next-generation particle colliders ...

The VHEE 2020 International Workshop saw more than 400 scientists gather virtually to evaluate the production of very high-energy electrons for radiotherapy. High-tech A dosimetry experiment for VHEE ...

CERN’s Molflow software has become the de-facto industry standard for ultra-high- vacuum simulations. Roberto Kersevan and Marton Ady describe how it is now enabling space research and other branches ...

An electron–positron collider to follow the LHC will produce copious Higgs bosons, yielding precise knowledge of this unique particle, explain Keith Ellis and Beate Heinemann. The novelty of the Higgs ...

The development at CERN of magnesium diboride cables and other advanced superconducting systems for the High-Luminosity LHC is also driving applications beyond fundamental research, describes Amalia ...

Rolf Widerøe operates one of his betatrons in 1953. Credit: Av Verdens Gang/NTB Scanpix The betatron is an early type of MeV-range electron accelerator which uses the electric field induced by a ...

With just 5% of its ultimate dataset collected so far, the LHC’s vast and unique physics programme has already transformed and enriched our understanding of elementary particles, writes Michelangelo ...