By Jon Cartwright, ScienceNOW

In late 2008, a few onlookers believed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would bring the end of the world. Three years later, our planet remains intact, but the European particle smasher may have made its first crack in modern physics.

If this crack turns out to be real, it might help explain an enduring mystery of the universe: why there’s lots of normal matter, but hardly any of the opposite—antimatter. “If it holds up, it’s exciting,” says particle physicist Robert Roser of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

To understand why...

Atari game designer Ed Logg, shown here in 1999, will be honored with a Pioneer Award by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences next year.
Image: Aaron Hightower/Wikipedia

If at some point in the 1980s you ever hastily jammed your hand into your pocket for another quarter only to find yourself fresh out, Ed Logg was probably to blame.

It’s impossible to know precisely which arcade game designer was responsible for making the most money off coin-operated machines, 25 cents at a time. But Logg would be on anyone’s short list. As a designer of Asteroids, Centipede and Gauntlet he kept Atari...