Particles

What Is a Particle?

It has been thought of as many things: a pointlike object, an excitation of a field, a speck of pure math that has cut into reality. But never has physicists’ conception of a particle changed more than it is changing now.

Quanta Magazine

Cosmic Bubbles May Have Forged Dark Matter, New Theory Suggests

New theory suggests cosmic bubbles during the birth of our universe are responsible for creating dark matter.

LiveScience

Black Holes Could Become Massive Particle Accelerators

Physicists suggest harnessing the gravitational pull of black holes to create ferocious particle accelerators. The trick? Carefully set everything up so the particles don’t get lost forever.

Live Science

How Mathematical ‘Hocus-Pocus’ Saved Particle Physics

Renormalization has become perhaps the single most important advance in theoretical physics in 50 years.

Quanta Magazine

One of Quantum Physics’ Greatest Paradoxes May Have Lost Its Leading Explanation

Underground experiment undermines gravity as the cause of quantum collapse.

Science

Seeking Dark Matter, They Detected Another Mystery

Do signals from beneath an Italian mountain herald a revolution in physics?

The New York Times

Why the Big Bang Produced Something Rather Than Nothing

How did matter gain the edge over antimatter in the early universe? Maybe, just maybe, neutrinos.

The New York Times

Does Consciousness Pervade the Universe?

Philosopher Philip Goff answers questions about “panpsychism.”

Scientific American

Loose Ends: String Theory and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

Join leading minds in theoretical physics for a whirlwind ride through the twists and turns of string theory — its past, its future, and what it tells us about the search for the universe’s final theory.

World Science Festival

Scientists Detail Mechanism Behind Gamma-Ray Bursts

Scientists have uncovered the mechanism behind gamma-ray bursts, intense flashes of high-energy radiation originating from space.

UPI

What a Lack of Unexplained Gory Deaths Tells Us About Dark Matter

A dark-matter particle of a certain size range would cause an injury like an exotic gunshot wound if it hit a human being. Fortunately, that’s apparently not the size these particles come in.

Emerging Technology from the arXiv, MIT Technology Review

Casting a Wide Net

In their quest to discover physics beyond the Standard Model, physicists weigh the pros and cons of different search strategies.

Symmetry

For a Split Second, a (Simulated) Particle Went Backward in Time

Using a quantum computer, physicists successfully reversed time for an artificial atom.

The New York Times

Dark Matter Detector Makes Incredible Neutrino Observation

A detector designed to hunt for dark matter has made a particle physics observation that will hopefully help physicists establish important truths about our Universe.

Gizmodo

Physicists Aim to Catch Slow-Decaying Dark Particle Inside LHC

“One particularly interesting possibility is that these long-lived dark particles are coupled to the Higgs boson in some fashion - that the Higgs is actually a portal to the dark world,” physicist LianTao Wang said.

UPI

How Long Do Neutrons Live? Physicists Close in on Decades-Old Puzzle

Researchers are narrowing down their measurements of how long the subatomic particle survives on its own.

Nature

Einstein’s Quantum Riddle

Join scientists as they grab light from across the universe to prove quantum entanglement is real.

NOVA, WGBH

Scientists Make Unprecedented Measurement of Electrons

Scientists have made an unprecedented close examination of the electron, providing fascinating new insights into the nature of particles, energy, and forces at infinitesimally small scales.

Newsweek

Three New Physics Experiments Could Revamp the Standard Model

Physicists build giant machines to study tiny particles.

Science News

After Years of Effort, Physicists Spot Higgs Boson Decaying in Most Ordinary Way

Physicists have spotted the Higgs decaying into a particle called a bottom quark and its antimatter counterpart, an antibottom quark.

Science

Quantum Chicken-or-Egg Experiment Blurs the Distinction Between Before and After

A new experiment shows that when fiddling with a photon, it can be impossible to say in which order two events occur, obliterating our common sense notion of before and after and, potentially, muddying the concept of causality.

Science