Science was never the same after meeting ‘the particle who lived.’ Back in the early 1930s, there were only a few known fundamental particles that made up the Universe. If you […]

And can we devise an experiment to tell, even when we aren’t looking? One of the most bizarre aspects of quantum physics is that the fundamental entities that make up the […]

They’re not just a theoretical prediction of quantum gravity. They should be detectable, too. The Universe, if you look at it closely and carefully enough, is fundamentally quantum in nature. […]

In our Universe, a left hand reflected in a mirror or pond appears to be a right hand. While most of the laws of nature are symmetric under reflections, obeying […]

With three colors and three anticolors, there aren’t actually nine gluons; only eight. One of the most puzzling features of the Universe is the strong nuclear force. Inside every proton or […]

If we waited long enough, would even protons themselves decay? There are certain things in the Universe that, if you leave them alone for long enough, they’ll eventually decay away. […]

If they have mass, then why don’t we see any slow-moving ones? For decades, the neutrino was among the most puzzling and elusive of cosmic particles. It took more than […]

Quantum physics just keeps getting weirder, even as it gets more fascinating. “Is it a wave or is it a particle?” Never has such a simple question had such a […]

The Standard Model and General Relativity can’t be all there is. But how will we discover what lies beyond them? One of the biggest problems with physics is that, apart from […]

CERN’s bold new proposal has physicists confronting the biggest question of all: is building a new collider worth it? If you want to discover anything novel about the natural, physical […]

You never know what you’re going to find when you look somewhere new for the first time. Approximately 4600 feet (1400 meters) underground, beneath the Italian mountain known as Gran Sasso, […]

Solid, liquid, and gas are the three everyone learns. Plasma is the fourth. But there are two more, and they’re fascinating. How many states of matter are there? When you […]

It should be just as sticky (or non-sticky) as normal matter. Here’s how we know. Not only here on Earth, but everywhere in the Universe that we look, we find structures […]

Astrophysics has probed a test of a fundamental law, ‘Lorentz invariance,’ well beyond the LHC’s limits. Einstein is still right. The greatest scientific legacy that Albert Einstein left us is this: […]

You’d have to throw out a lot of known physics for this to even be a possibility. Here’s why. It’s an undeniable scientific fact that dark matter must exist in order […]

Dark matter is perhaps the most mysterious substance in the Universe. What exactly it is, however, still eludes us. Dark matter is one of the most mysterious and yet most ubiquitous […]

Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]

The age of the Universe is only 13.8 billion years, but we know that protons survive much longer. Here’s how. Since the discovery of radioactivity in the 19th century, humanity has […]

There’s real, straightforward science behind the destruction of an Alderaan-sized planet. In all of science fiction, perhaps the most iconic moment of destruction occurs in 1977’s Star Wars: A New […]

If it holds up, it would revolutionize physics and be a slam-dunk Nobel Prize. Here’s why that’s unlikely to be the case. Every so often, an experiment comes along in physics […]

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Standard Model is now complete. Can we be sure there isn’t another generation of particles out there? The Universe, at a fundamental level, […]

The Sudbury neutrino observatory, which was instrumental in demonstrating neutrino oscillations and the massiveness of neutrinos. With additional results from atmospheric, solar, and terrestrial observatories and experiments, we may not […]

Electron-positron or proton-proton colliders are all the rage. But the unstable muon might be the key to unlocking the next frontier. If you want to probe the frontiers of fundamental […]

All protons have the same exact mass as every other proton. For particles like the Higgs boson, this isn’t true. One of the most puzzling aspects of quantum physics is how […]

It’s perhaps the most famous equation of all, with lessons about reality for every one of us. If you’ve ever heard of Albert Einstein, chances are you know at least one […]

There are rules absolutely forbidding it from happening. But some particles do it anyway. All the matter we know of in the Universe is made up of Standard Model particles. Photons […]

Particle physics is everywhere, even in the palm of your hand. When you hold out your palm and point it towards the sky, what is it that’s interacting with your hand? […]

Hunting for dark matter, neutrinos, and other elusive signals isn’t just a satisfying endeavor, it’s a way of life for Dr. Laura Manenti. We know that there’s more to the Universe […]

If you think nothing can move faster than light, check out this clever way to defeat that limit. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light. When Einstein set forth […]

Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]