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Visuals: Animations

2D Shear: Simple rules are written that if randomly placed particles touch when a system shears they are moved to a new position when the system is cycled back. (Unit: 8)

AdS/CFT: AdS/CFT equates a string theory with gravity to a particle theory without gravity. (Unit: 4)

Amount of Matter in a Flat Universe: The amount of matter is determined by measuring the overall height and pattern of the temperature fluctuations. (Unit: 11)

Analogy for the Higgs Mechanism: The Higgs mechanism is analogous to a pond freezing over. (Unit: 2)

Annihilation and Creation of Particles: When an electron and its antiparticle collide, they annihilate and new particles are created. (Unit: 2)

ArgoNeuT: ArgoNeuT contains liquid argon in a type of detector called a "time projection chamber." (Unit: 1)

ATLAS Components: The Electromagnetic Calorimeter, the Hadronic Calorimeter and the Muon Spectrometer, send different data to the trigger. (Unit: 2)

ATLAS Detector: ATLAS, the largest of the LHC's six detectors, weighs around 7,000 tons, is over five stories tall, and is 100 meters underground. (Unit: 2)

Atoms to Quarks: When we try to break the world down to the smallest building blocks of matter, we come up with the twelve elementary particles of the Standard Model. (Unit: 1)

BCS Pairs: The stronger the attraction between pairs, the greater the resistance of the pairs to breaking apart. (Unit: 6)

Behavior of Bosons and Fermions: The quantum mechanical behavior of bosons is always to do the same thing. The quantum mechanical behavior of fermions is never to do the same thing. (Unit: 6)

Biofilm Growth: Growth of a biofilm of the bacteria Bacillis subtilis over four days. (Unit: 9)

Black Holes: One of the strangest predictions of general relativity is that space-time can bend so much that it will produce a hole in the middle of space. (Unit: 4)

Bosons to BEC: When a gas of bosons is cooled to an extremely low temperature, bosons create a new state of matter—a Bose-Einstein Condensate or BEC. (Unit: 6)

Bragg Peak: When energetic protons enter tissue, they release most of their energy as they come to rest. Damage to nearby organs and structures can be minimized. (Unit: 9)

Brane Annihilation: In one model, two branes moving towards each other drove inflation. Their collision ended inflation and resulted in the formation of strings. (Unit: 4)

Branes: String theory contains more than just strings: it includes multi-dimensional objects, or "branes." Our universe is made up of a 3-dimensional brane. (Unit: 4)

Cesium Clock: The ability to make precision measurements in a short amount of time has jumped enormously. (Unit: 5)

Chemotaxis: A population of slime-mold cells forms an aggregate in response to a signaling molecule. (Unit: 9)

Cherenkov Radiation: The Cherenkov Radiation sends a ring of light to the edge of the detector that is picked up by photo multiplier tubes. (Unit: 1)

Composition of the Universe: Atomic matter, the matter we are familiar with, makes up less than 5% of the total density of the universe. (Unit: 11)

Conditional Processing in a Bose-Einstein Condensate: A Bose-Einstein condensate as a novel processor for quantum information. (Unit: 7)

Cooling a Gas of Fermions: A gas of fermions is cooled and the motion of the atoms in a trap is quantized. There is quite a bit of kinetic energy in that gas even at low temperatures. (Unit: 6)

Cooper Pairing: Unlike Jin's initial Fermi condensate, there is a different kind of pairing involved with superconductors called "cooper pairing." (Unit: 6)

Cooper Pairing and Superconductivity: One electron moving in one direction and one electron moving in the opposite direction somehow move in some correlated way. (Unit: 6)

Coupling Laser: Two lasers, a probe and a coupling laser, are used together, allowing a light pulse to be imprinted in the atoms of a condensate. (Unit: 7)

Critical Points: A critical point is the point at which the boundary that separates two stable states of matter disappears. (Unit: 8)

Cyclotron: At the center of a cyclotron, a charged particle travels through a magnetic field that curves its path into a spiral and out of the cyclotron at a high speed. (Unit: 9)

Dark Matter Annihilation: Dark matter particles could be their own antimatter partners. Therefore, annihilation could occur if two dark matter particles collide. (Unit: 10)

DNA Helix Animation: The double helix. (Unit: 9)

Electron-Electron Scattering: This movie shows the simplest way two electrons can scatter. (Unit: 2)

Energy to Produce Mass: E=mc² tells us if you have energy you can produce any type of particle with a certain mass, as long as the mass is less than the energy you've created. (Unit: 1)

Eot-Wash Pendulum Data: The data from the first Eot-Wash Pendulum showed that the inverse square law held true down to a distance of 1/5th of a millimeter, or 200 microns. (Unit: 3)

Eot-Wash Torsion Balance: The Eot-Wash Group redesigned the classic torsion balance, dramatically increasing its precision and pushing the boundaries of what could be measured. (Unit: 3)

Evaporative Cooling: When Zwierlein applies a certain radio frequency to the trapped atoms, it shaves off the hotter atoms and leaves the cooler ones. (Unit: 5)

Extra Dimensions: Above each point in our visible dimensions, a small extra-dimensional space may be hidden. (Unit: 4)

Extra Dimensions: One possible scenario offered by theorists to explain the apparent weakness of gravity is that the universe is made up of more than three spatial dimensions. (Unit: 3)

Fluctuations and Temperature: Coleman could see a very direct and simple relationship with the spectrum of the fluctuations and the temperature of the material. (Unit: 8)

Frequency of Cesium Atoms: Cesium atoms run at a frequency of around 10 billion cycles per second, which corresponds to a microwave frequency. (Unit: 5)

From Fermions to BEC: In Jin's achievement of a Fermi condensate, the key breakthrough was coercing individual fermionic atoms to pair together creating bosonic molecules. (Unit: 6)

Fundamental Strings: String Theory proposes that the building blocks of matter are not point like particles, but instead are vibrating "strings." (Unit: 4)

Gaps in the Standard Model: Perhaps the existence of particles or interactions still to be discovered could help explain gaps in the Standard Model. (Unit: 2)

Geometry of the Universe: According to general relativity, the curvature of space determines how light travels. (Unit: 11)

Gravitational Attraction in Torsion Balance: The gravitational force between the pendulum and the attractor depends on the position of the holes. (Unit: 3)

Gravitational Lensing: Gravitational lensing occurs when a dense object bends space-time and causes the path of a light ray to be deflected around it, producing a distorted image. (Unit: 4)

Haslam Map and WMAP: The Haslam Map measures synchrotron radiation at a radio frequency. (Unit: 10)

Hawking Radiation: According to quantum mechanics, black holes are actually continuously emitting tiny amounts of matter. This is known as Hawking radiation. (Unit: 4)

Higgs: The Higgs is believed to be a relatively heavy particle—over one hundred times heavier than a proton. (Unit: 1)

Higgs Boson and Z Boson: If the Higgs were produced with the Z boson, we would see a bottom quark pair from the Higgs decay, and a high-energy muon pair from the Z boson decay. (Unit: 1)

Higgs Mass Range: Recent research has determined that the mass of the Higgs is most likely between 115 and 160 GeV. (Unit: 1)

Higgs Mechanism and Higgs Field: The Higgs mechanism proposes that the whole universe is filled with a field called a "Higgs field." (Unit: 1)

High Temperature Superconductors: In the first superconducting material, mercury was cooled to 4 K and 75 years later scientists made a giant leap forward as they discovered many related materials that superconduct at temperatures well above 90 K. (Unit: 8)

Hubble's Law: By charting velocities of galaxies with his own observations of their distances from the Milky Way, he found the galaxies were receding from us. (Unit: 11)

Inflation: In its first fraction of a second, our universe expanded by a factor of 10³⁰, growiing by a greater percentage than it has in the 14 billion years since. (Unit: 4)

Large Hadron Collider: The LHC is the largest and most complicated scientific machine ever created, generating data to advance our knowledge of the fundamental forces. (Unit: 2)

Laser Cooling 1: The key to laser cooling is that in the process of absorbing a photon, an atom receives a small push in the direction away from the source of light. (Unit: 5)

Laser Cooling 2: As atoms continuously absorb photons coming from one direction, and re-emit photons in random directions, the net result is a loss of momentum. (Unit: 5)

Laser Cooling 3: The cooling inside the chamber takes place in several steps. The ultimate temperature they can reach is limited and they will need to be cooled further. (Unit: 5)

LIGO Interferometer and Constructive Interference: When a gravitational wave reaches the interferometer, it will shrink one arm and stretch the other arm causing the laser beams to be slightly out of phase. (Unit: 3)

LIGO Interferometer and Destructive Interference: An interferometer splits a laser beam and then recombined it. If the waves are perfectly out of phase they cancel each other out—a phenomenon called "destructive interference." (Unit: 3)

LIGO Yardstick: This laser yardstick will be used to detect miniscule, fleeting changes in its overall measured length as gravitational waves sweep over it. (Unit: 3)

Luminosity: The LHC will operate with unprecedented luminosity—the measure used to express the number of collisions of protons per second. (Unit: 2)

Lux Detector: Rick Gaitskell of Brown University is one member of a team of scientists and researchers attempting to strike particle physics gold. (Unit: 10)

Lux Detector PMTs: The nucleus recoils and emits scintillation light which we detect using photosensitive detectors at the boundaries of the container. (Unit: 10)

Lux Detector Water Shield: This multilayered strategy of putting the detector below ground and immersing it in water allows for an extremely low background event rate in their detector. (Unit: 10)

Manipulating a Matter Wave: A matter wave containing the information of a light pulse is manipulated, or processed, using condensates and a laser. (Unit: 7)

Measuring Gravity with Laser Light: To measure how strong gravity is between the two discs, laser light is bounced off the mirrors above the top pendulum disc. (Unit: 3)

Mercury Trap: Removing the electron gives the ion an electrical charge, so it can be suspended in a trap by electric forces. (Unit: 5)

Microwave Wavelength: The cosmic microwave background is leftover heat from the Big Bang. Microwave wavelengths are relatively long compared to optical wavelengths. (Unit: 11)

MiniBooNE Reactions: When a muon neutrino hits an atom, a muon is released. Or, if a muon neutrino has oscillated into an electron neutrino, an electron is released. (Unit: 1)

Nambu-Goldstone boson: A wave in field space corresponds to a physical particle. (Unit: 2)

Neutrino Oscillation: The neutrino can change back and forth, oscillating as it travels through space. This explains the apparent lack of solar neutrinos. (Unit: 1)

Neutrino Oscillation and Mass: According to quantum mechanics, in order for neutrino oscillation to occur, the neutrinos must have slightly different masses. (Unit: 1)

Neutrinos and the MiniBooNE Tank: To run the experiment, muon neutrinos created at Fermilab are sent towards the MiniBooNE tank filled with 250,000 gallons of mineral oil. (Unit: 1)

Neutron Scattering: As neutrons come in contact with magnetic atoms in a material, they scatter, losing kinetic energy. This excites the magnetic fluctuations in the material. (Unit: 8)

Parent Photon Split into Two Daughter Photons: A high energy parent photon is split into two lower energy daughter photons. These photons become entangled in energy, and are in a superposition state. (Unit: 7)

Particle Annihilation: Annihilation is what happens when a particle meets its antimatter partner. (Unit: 10)

Periodic Table: A Canvas: And the canvas that we work with is the canvas of the periodic table. We have something like 92 different elements to play with. (Unit: 8)

Photon as Electromagnetic Wave: A photon, a particle of light, can be thought of as an electromagnetic wave with a particular oscillation frequency. (Unit: 5)

Photon Frequency and Excitement of Atoms: The probability that the atoms will be excited out of their ground state reaches a peak when the photons are tuned to exactly the right frequency. (Unit: 5)

Proton Collisions: When two protons collide, any particle with a mass smaller than the collision energy can be created. (Unit: 2)

Quantum Critical: CeCu6Au is "quantum critical" when it fluctuates between magnetic and metallic phases. Coleman wants to understand this kind of emergent behavior. (Unit: 8)

Quantum-Mechanical Magic Trick: A light pulse is extinguished in one part of space and then regenerated in a different location. (Unit: 7)

Quarks From the Vacuum: As two bound quarks are pulled apart, new quarks pop out of the vacuum. (Unit: 2)

Random Motion: Random motion of gas molecules—bottom up. (Unit: 9)

Redshift: When the spectral lines shift towards the red end of the spectrum, we infer that the wavelength has stretched. This is called a "redshift." (Unit: 11)

Refractive Index: Light is known to travel through the universe at a constant speed. But light can be slowed down, and is, everyday, in as simple a material as glass. (Unit: 7)

Rotational Entropy: Rotational entropy is related to the number of possible ways particles can be arranged in a structure. The greater the number, the greater the entropy. (Unit: 9)

Scanning Tunneling Microscope: An electric voltage is applied between the microscope tip and the sample. Measuring the current can reveal quantum mechanical features of the sample. (Unit: 6)

Scattering Particles: A combination particle that's a mixture of type A and type B can be turned into a pure type A or pure type B particle when it interacts with matter. (Unit: 2)

Slowing Light: Light slows down in a Bose-Einstein condensate. (Unit: 7)

Standard Model: The Standard Model of particle physics is the best theory that physicists have to describe these elementary particles and the forces that influence them. (Unit: 1)

Standard Model: The Standard Model, the best theory we have to describe the elementary particles and interactions, does not accommodate gravity. (Unit: 2)

Standard Model with Higgs Boson: First proposed in 1964, the Higgs boson plays a unique role in the Standard Model. It helps explain how fundamental particles obtain mass. (Unit: 1)

Standard vs. Super Conductors: In a typical copper cable, there's resistance. In a superconductor, when you send electrons in one end, they come out the other end with no energy loss. (Unit: 6)

Storing Light as Matter: Atoms that make up the condensate are storing the light as matter in a quantum superposition state. This opens up the door for quantum computation. (Unit: 7)

String Theory and Extra Dimensions: String theory proposes as many as seven extra spatial dimensions. (Unit: 4)

Superconductor Properties: Superconductors carry electrical current without resistance and are almost perfect diamagnets (a more fundamental aspect of their behavior), in that they can screen out external magnetic fields within a short distance. (Unit: 8)

Superconductor Properties: Superconductors are materials with two essential properties: They have zero resistance and expel magnetic fields. (Unit: 6)

Superfluid Fountain: A fountain of superfluid ⁴He. (Unit: 6)

Synchrotron Radiation: Synchrotron Radiation is generated as charged particles, that are moving near the speed of light, spiral around the lines of a magnetic field. (Unit: 10)

Taylor's Experiment 1: Like G.I Taylor, they placed their colloid, the fluid and the particles, inside a couette cell, which consists of a cylinder with another cylinder inside it. (Unit: 8)

Taylor's Experiment 2: When Pine and Gollub ran this experiment they thought that rotating the cylinder would shear the fluid, causing some particles to collide. (Unit: 8)

Three Flavors of Neutrinos: There are three different "flavors" of neutrinos in the Standard Model. (Unit: 1)

Timeline of Type I and Type II Superconductors: The first (Type I) superconductors were cooled at least to 30 Kelvin. In 1986, a new class of high-temperature superconductors (Type II) was found. (Unit: 6)

Top Quarks and Leptons: Top quarks decay into lighter particles, which decay into lighter particles. Physicists must trace back through the decay chain. (Unit: 2)

Trigger and ATLAS Detectors: The trigger filters 40 million events down to 200 every second, using a three step process involving different ATLAS detectors. (Unit: 2)

Type I and Type II Superconductors: Type I superconductors expel the magnetic field uniformly. Type II allow the magnetic field to penetrate in quantized packets called "vortices." (Unit: 6)

Vibrational Entropy: There are different kinds of entropy. Vibrational entropy describes the number of ways that a structure can flex or vibrate without breaking. (Unit: 9)

Virus Self-Assembly: In some viruses the capsid appears to be completely self-assembled. Understanding capsid self-assembly could present new ways to fight disease. (Unit: 9)

Vortices: Unpinned vortices can move, forming a regular pattern in the STM images. Pinned vortices are scattered irregularly throughout the image. (Unit: 6)

WIMP Interaction with Xenon: When a WIMP interacts with the xenon, it not only causes an initial burst of light, but it also ionizes the xenon atoms. (Unit: 10)