The Large Hadron Collider Is Getting an Upgrade
Today, workers at the world’s largest atom smasher are breaking ground on a performance-enhancing upgrade that will allow scientists to conduct even bigger and better physics experiments.
The Universe Is Not in Danger of Ending From a Higgs Boson Vacuum Bubble
There are few easier ways to get people to read your website than to scare them. That’s how we ended up with the media frenzy surrounding Tiangong-1, and it’s why InfoWars continues to exist. It’s also how we’ve ended up with folks telling you the universe is due to end. Heck, we’re guilty ourselves.
How Physicists Recycled WWII Ships and Artillery to Unlock the Mysteries of the Universe
A million Russian artillery shells helped scientists discover the Higgs boson. And all over the world, remnants of World War II weapons are built into the most mysterious experiments in physics.
In the mid-1990s, physicists needed tons of a metal strong enough to withstand the massive magnetic fields of the house-sized…
Nobel-Winning Physicist Worried About 100 Chocolate Coin Wager Over New Particles
Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek was optimistic back in 2012. After all, he’d just won a wager after scientists had just announced their Higgs boson discovery at the Large Hadron Collider particle physics experiment in Switzerland. He made another bet—but he’s doesn’t feel as confident today.
Groundbreaking Observation Confirms an Important Prediction of Quantum Physics
Particle accelerators have a lot of important jobs, like looking for new stuff by slamming beams of old stuff together. But a new particle accelerator observation has managed to be important while doing almost precisely the opposite of what we’d expect. Physicists have found evidence for hard-to-detect stuff by, well, …
The Scientists Who Look for Nothing to Understand Everything
Physicist Usama Hussain laughed uncomfortably every time the conversation even got close to the question, “Do you look for nothing?” His professors would kill him if they heard him agree with that. After all, he’s technically looking for a brand new particle that may or may not exist, with the hopes that it might help…
The High Schoolers Hunting for the Universe's Secrets
Four British schoolboys had just been called from class. They were ten days away from their A-level exams, the ones that determine the direction the rest of their lives would take, but they’d been interrupted from their studies to discuss the deepest secrets of the universe—their work hunting for the magnetic monopole…
Scientists Are Exploring a Strange New Way to Create an Exotic Phase of Matter
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND— Hiding in the suburbs behind trees and a meadow with furry brown donkeys is a warehouse with an elevator that only visits negative floors. Hundreds of feet down, hyper complex detectors inside an octagonal tube the color and size of a large barn whistle loudly and peer like cameras at protons, the…
A Trail of Strange Physics Results Offers Tantalizing Hints of New Particles
Conceptually, particle physics experiments are surprisingly simple. Smash a shitload of particles together, and look at what comes out. The results will either confirm whatever the business-as-usual theory is, or, if there’s a really crystal clear deviation from that theory, they might prove some new hypothesis about…
Watch a Large Hadron Collider Experiment Get a Major Upgrade
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider beneath Geneva, Switzerland isn’t just one, but a handful of experiments sprinkled along the length of the 17-mile-round ring. One of the biggest, the Compact Muon Solenoid or CMS, is getting a major upgrade today, which CERN is comparing to an open-heart surgery.
Does the Large Hadron Collider Actually Disprove Ghosts?
The Large Hadron Collider sits underground, spanning over five miles across beneath the bucolic suburbs of Geneva, Switzerland. This metal behemoth serves to try and understand the most basic building blocks of our universe. The question stands, then: if ghosts are real, shouldn’t the LHC have found them?
Corpse of Weasel Killed by Large Hadron Collider Displayed in Twisted Museum Exhibition
The Large Hadron Collider is the largest and most complex machine in the world, but it only took one adventurous weasel to shut it down in November of last year. The unfortunate fellow jumped over a substation fence and was hit by 18,000 volts of electricity. Now, its stuffed corpse is on display at the Rotterdam…
It's Official: The LHC Didn't Find a New Particle [UPDATED]
Well, shoot. It’s been confirmed that early hints of a possible exotic new particle at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have vanished. That disappointing news was announced this morning at a physics conference in Chicago.
CERN Physicists Have Discovered a Batch of New Exotic Particles
Scientists working at CERN have found four new “tetraquark” particles comprised of the same four subatomic building blocks. These exotic particles don’t last very long, and they probably don’t play an important cosmological role, but the discovery reveals the surprising diversity of the tetraquark family.
Hopes Are Fading Fast for Possible New Particle at the LHC
Rumors are swirling again among physicists, but this time they’re not about gravitational waves. Instead, hopes are fading that two separate, but complementary, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider may have discovered a possible new particle.
Don’t Get Too Excited Yet About the LHC’s Hint of a New Particle
Earlier this week, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider announced they’d found tantalizing traces of a possible new fundamental particle — perhaps a heavier cousin of the Higgs boson, or the elusive graviton, a quantum carrier of the force of gravity.
The LHC is Back in Business. But What is it Really Going to Tell Us?
After two years of upgrades, the world’s largest particle accelerator is back in business. And it’s already bashing subatomic particles together at higher energies than ever before to probe the most fundamental questions about the nature of the universe.
The LHC Just Shattered Its Previous Record For Energy Output
Late yesterday, CERN scientists made history by using the most powerful particle accelerator in the world to hurl beams of protons together at the record-breaking energy of 13 TeV (tera-electronvolts) — a full 5 TeV higher than the previous standard.
The Large Hadron Collider Just Detected Extremely Rare Particle Decays
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have just announced the detection of a rare particle decay “harder to find than the famous Higgs particle.” The strange B meson is certainly a lot less famous than the Higgs boson, but it also has an important role to play in the Standard Model of particle physics.
And Now, The Higgs Boson Discovery Played As Heavy Metal Music
Particle physicist and musician Piotr Traczyk has taken data plots from the historic discovery of the Higgs boson and converted it into music that can be played by two guitars. Heavy metal guitars, to be more precise. The result is as nerdy as it is excellent.
