Nuclear Science
Nuclear science is the study of sub-atomic particles and their application in various disciplines. Here you can learn about nuclear power plants, atomic theory and radiation.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor plant aims to demonstrate that nuclear fusion could be a viable source of power in the future.
The seriously ambitious experiment aims to understand the mysterious neutrino and maybe even figure out why matter won out over antimatter during the Big Bang.
Fukushima Radiation Readings Are Extremely High … But Let's Not Freak Out
New data shows extremely high radiation levels inside one of the reactor containment vessels. Are post-tsunami radiation levels spiking? Not so fast …
In 1957, Hugh Everett first wrote about the multiverse — different realms where every choice spawns a separate universe in which another version of ourselves does something different. It sounds crazy, but here are some reasons it might be true.
The site of the largest nuclear accident in history is now home to diverse wildlife. Can studying the animals help researchers discover how radiation affects us all?
One of the world's most complex devices is gearing up again for some serious collisions.
Early fusion reactor experiments ran into a big problem: It took more energy to get fusion started than was produced by the fusion itself.
When physicists want accelerator particles, they head to OK Quark, answer questions about what they're looking for, and hope for a match. Nah, wait … that's not it at all.
Of all the superheroes we have in the universe, supersymmetry might be the one that will save us from total annihilation. Not because it fights bad guys, but because it just might explain how the tiniest parts of the cosmos work.
Want to see two physicists fight? Ask them what they think about the multiverse. Isn't it time you formed an opinion, too?
When something as important as the Higgs rocks our world, we want to know every last thing about it, including what it looks like. So?
Twenty-seven kilometers is more than five 5K races. Most humans aren't interested in running that much, so why do a bunch of speeding protons require that considerable distance?
The Large Hadron Collider sounds so exciting, with its millions of near-light-speed collisions per second. But what do scientists really see while that's going on?
String theory is the basic idea that everything in the universe is fundamentally composed of vibrating strings. Can the LHC prove that it's true?
Can supersymmetry and the multiverse both be true simultaneously?
Supersymmetry: the idea that the particles we know about have as-yet-underscovered force partners. Multiverse: exactly what it sounds like. Can they coexist?
When scientists announced that the Large Hadron Collider had found evidence of the Higgs boson, we cried right along with elated physicists everywhere. But ... then what?
To the uninitiated, the LHC can look like a junk drawer ... a junk drawer that's full of tiny, rapidly decaying particles that move at light speed. How do scientists know what's where?
The Large Hadron Collider isn't just a one-trick (Higgs) pony. Find out what else has happened where hundreds of millions of particles may collide any given second.
Nuclear waste epitomizes the double-edged sword of modern technology. It's a toxic and radioactive byproduct of nuclear medicine, nuclear weapons manufacturing and nuclear power plants.
Batman and particle physicists have a lot in common. While Batman brawls with anarchist clowns and mutated ecoterrorists, CERN scientists chase down their own notable adversaries. Get to know five of them.
Who wants to reduce our complicated universe down to its simplest building blocks? A bunch of particle physicists, that's who. Why is the Higgs boson critical to that goal?
Thanks to our voracious appetite for energy, the element long linked with nuclear weapons is taking on a new role. Where does the hunt begin for uranium?
We're all exposed to tiny levels of radiation, but a blast of it can leave you in agony -- that is, if it doesn't kill you outright. What is it, what causes it and how can we treat it?
It's lunchtime, and you've spastically spilled soda all over your desk. Chances are you could tackle that mess faster than we could say "Mr. Clean." What do you do though when the spill is radioactive?
It's hard to get beyond Fukushima Daiichi when you think about nuclear meltdowns, but in fact the first one occurred decades ago, in 1969, in Switzerland's Lake Geneva region. How does such a cataclysmic incident occur?
