Berkeley Lab scientists achieve tunable, high-quality electron beams for laser plasma accelerators
Light sources are the ultimate app for particle physics. Researchers around the world use the powerful X-ray beams that light sources create for materials science, protein structure analysis, historical research, pharmaceutical research and drug development and the list keeps going. Argonne National Laboratory published the following story on August 25, 2011 about contributions that the Advanced Photon Source made to developing a new drug to treat skin cancer. For more examples about the applications of particle physics, visit Accelerators for America's Future. 
On Tuesday, Aug. 23, the Tevatron accelerator knew something none of the people operating it knew. A 5.9-magnitude earthquake had struck the East Coast, and the super-sensitive Tevatron felt it as it happened about 600 miles away. It had also registered a similar quake in Colorado the night before.
The physics community got a jolt last year when results showed for the first time that neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos, might be the odd man out in the particle world and have different masses. This idea was something that went against most commonly accepted theories of how the subatomic world works.
Scientists on an experiment at CERN announced today that there is more to cloud formation than previously thought. Their study, published in the journal Nature, looked at the effects on cloud formation of vapors and cosmic rays in the atmosphere. The results could help improve the accuracy of climate models.
As homage to tape and physics, MIT postdoctoral associate Teppei Katori, who works at Fermilab, created the art piece Selex. Named for a fixed-target charmed baryon experiment that ran in Fermilab’s Tevatron from 1996-97, Selex is part of the exhibit Tape: A Celebration currently showing at the Chicago Art Department in the city’s Pilsen neighborhood.
A new experiment planned at Fermilab will allow researchers to peer into the sub-atomic world of virtual particles and resolve a decade old mystery. The Fermilab muon g-2 experiment will use an intense beam of muons, short-lived particles that are similar to electrons but 200 times heavier.