Symmetry

About Symmetry

Overview

Symmetry is an online magazine about particle physics published jointly by two of the most important research institutions in the field: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. Funded by the United States Department of Energy Office of Science, the magazine is published free of charge and describes itself as the reader's view into the world of particle physics — offering the latest news, the people behind the science, and the background needed to become fluent in the language of particle physics. Its ISSN is 1931-8367.

Unlike a general science magazine that samples many disciplines, Symmetry devotes itself almost entirely to one: the study of nature's fundamental particles and forces, and the closely related fields of cosmology, astroparticle physics, and synchrotron science. It translates the work of the world's accelerator laboratories and underground detectors into stories that a curious non-specialist can follow, while still being read with interest by working physicists. From the halls of Fermilab's Tevatron era through the Large Hadron Collider's collision runs and the long search for dark matter, Symmetry has chronicled two decades of particle physics discovery.

Founding and Joint Publication

Symmetry was first published in 2004 as a joint publication of Fermilab and SLAC — a deliberate partnership between the two great American accelerator laboratories, one in the Midwest and one on the West Coast. The choice was significant: it signaled that particle physics, though pursued through rival machines and competing experiments, would speak to the public with a single voice. The magazine's masthead identified it plainly as "a joint Fermilab/SLAC publication," with publishers from both laboratories — Judy Jackson of Fermilab and Neil Calder of SLAC in its early years — and an editorial staff drawing on both institutions.

The journal-style numbering tells the story of its growth: the October 2011 issue was volume 8, number 3 — and it marked the magazine's 50th issue. In its print era, the magazine's own colophon stated that it was published six times per year by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Its editorial office was based at Fermilab, at P.O. Box 500, MS 206, Batavia, Illinois 60510 — the same Batavia campus where the Tevatron collider once smashed protons and antiprotons at the highest energies on Earth.

The Two Laboratories Behind the Magazine

The partnership behind Symmetry reflects the institutional geography of American particle physics. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, founded in the late 1960s in Batavia, Illinois, grew from Robert Rathbun Wilson's vision of a great American accelerator laboratory and became home to the Tevatron, the world's most powerful collider for decades, where the top quark was discovered in 1995. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, founded in 1962 at Stanford University in California, operates the famous two-mile linear accelerator and went on to discoveries honored with Nobel Prizes, including the quark structure of the proton and the tau lepton.

Publishing a magazine together was a natural extension of a collaboration that already spanned experiments, detector development, and scientific staff. Because both laboratories are funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science, the magazine's public funding is transparent — its issues carried the explicit statement that the publication was supported by the DOE Office of Science. That backing also meant the magazine was free, removing the usual barrier between a specialized scientific field and the general reader.

Editorial Mission and Coverage

The editor-in-chief in the magazine's early years, David Harris, described Symmetry as "a particle physics/cosmology/astroparticle physics/synchrotron science mag published free by Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Fermilab." That compact description captures the magazine's beat better than any slogan: it covers the collider experiments that probe matter at the smallest scales, the cosmological questions those particles illuminate, the astroparticle detectors that watch the sky for cosmic messengers, and the synchrotron light sources whose intense X-ray beams serve biology, materials science, and chemistry as well as physics.

Regular coverage has included the neutrino experiments that measure the universe's most elusive particles — from the Daya Bay and NOvA experiments hunting the mixing angle theta-13 to the Muon g-2 experiment's painstaking measurement of the muon's magnetic moment after its magnet's famous 3,200-mile journey to Fermilab. The magazine has followed the long quest to understand dark matter, the physics of the Large Hadron Collider, and the succession of ever-more-powerful accelerators and detectors that define the field's frontiers. Its 50th issue cover story examined the shutdown of Fermilab's Tevatron and the proposed Project X accelerator complex, placing the laboratory's past and future in a single frame.

A Truly International Contributor Network

One of Symmetry's distinctive features is its contributing-editor network, which spans the world's particle physics laboratories. The magazine's mastheads list contributing editors from CERN in Switzerland, INFN in Italy, DESY in Germany, KEK in Japan, TRIUMF in Canada, IHEP in China, NIKHEF in the Netherlands, JINR in Russia, BNL, LBNL, and Argonne in the United States, and STFC in the United Kingdom. This global bench of correspondents means that Symmetry, though rooted in two American laboratories, reports genuinely international science — from the LHC's underground caverns to neutrino beams crossing continents.

The magazine also became a vehicle for science communication beyond its pages. In 2013 it created the "Excellence in Science Communication" award — affectionately nicknamed the "Symmy" — honoring physicists who explain their work compellingly on camera. The first Symmy went to University of Mississippi physicist Breese Quinn for his entry in the magazine's "Why particle physics matters" video contest, part of a broader effort to give the field's practitioners a public voice.

From Print to Digital

Like many specialist publications, Symmetry made its decisive move from print to the web in the digital era. In October 2015, Fermilab announced that Symmetry had launched a brand-new magazine — a redesigned website with simplified and updated pages, designed to guide readers to the magazine's best art and photography and deliver a better reading experience. The redesign reflected how the magazine's audience actually consumed it: through browsers and mobile devices rather than the mail.

The web-native Symmetry organizes its journalism into news and features, with topic tags spanning the full particle-physics landscape. Its articles are syndicated across the laboratory ecosystem — SLAC's own site, for instance, surfaces Symmetry features on dark-matter searches and LHC collisions — multiplying the reach of each story far beyond the magazine's own readership.

Art, Design, and Visual Storytelling

From the beginning, Symmetry took its visual presentation seriously. Its production credits in the print era named Sandbox Studio of Chicago as the design and production house and listed art directors, designers, and illustrators alongside its writers and editors. Particle physics is a field whose objects — detectors the size of cathedrals, particle tracks, cosmic events — demand visual interpretation, and the magazine invested in photography and illustration to match its prose.

Fermilab's Visual Media Services provided photographic services, and the magazine's covers and feature illustrations frequently came from specialized science illustrators. The 2015 website redesign explicitly aimed to foreground the magazine's "best art and photography," recognizing that in the crowded online science-media landscape, strong visual storytelling is what draws a general reader into a story about supersymmetry or neutrino oscillations.

Why Symmetry Matters

Particle physics occupies a peculiar place in public culture: it is simultaneously the most fundamental of sciences and one of the most abstract, dealing with entities no human eye will ever see. Symmetry matters because it bridges that gap with unusual authority — it is written by people who live at the laboratories, funded to serve the public, and free of the commercial pressures that shape most science journalism.

Its value extends beyond the general reader. Working physicists read it for news of other laboratories and experiments; science teachers use its explainers in classrooms; journalists mine it for story leads and background. And because it is published by the institutions that actually operate the accelerators and detectors, it carries a credibility that secondhand coverage cannot match. Two decades after its first issue, Symmetry remains the most direct window the American particle-physics community offers into its own world.

Reading Symmetry Today

Symmetry is published online at symmetrymagazine.org, where its full archive of news and features is available free of charge — no subscription, no paywall, consistent with its publicly funded mission. Readers can browse by topic, from accelerators and detectors to dark matter and neutrinos, and can contact the magazine at its long-standing Batavia, Illinois editorial office.

For the curious reader with no physics background, the magazine is deliberately welcoming: its stated purpose is to give readers "the background information you need to gain fluency in the language of particle physics." For the specialist, it offers a uniquely well-sourced chronicle of the field's experiments, people, and institutions. Either way, it remains what it set out to be in 2004: a view into the world of particle physics, published by the laboratories that make that world.

Visit the official Symmetry website.