Particle physics

A Famous Dark Matter Signal Is Probably Coming From Something Else

An underground experiment in South Korea has turned up nothing, suggesting an intriguing observation from 2017 was a red herring.

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Nov 10

When Will Force Shields Be Real?

"...a personal field ... as portrayed in many science fiction movies and comic books, that is invisible to the naked eye—that will take some doing."

Tech News Daniel Kolitz Oct 18

Dark Energy Could Be Responsible for Mysterious Experiment Signals, Researchers Say

What if a bunch of liquid xenon under the Apennine Mountains found 68% of the universe?

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Sep 17

What to Know About the Newly Discovered Tetraquark at the Large Hadron Collider

The particle is charmed twice over and is the longest-lived exotic matter particle yet found.

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Aug 2

Photo: Jessica Esquivel, Ph.D and Fermilab

Young Physicists Are Shaping the Next Generation of Discoveries

Early career scientists like Jessica Esquivel are driving innovations at major experiments like Muon G-2 at Fermilab.

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jun 21

If We Live in a Sea of Dark Matter, This Tiny Mirror Might Be Able to Detect It

Despite the vast and expensive effort to figure out the identity of the invisible stuff that seems to make up much of the universe, no proposed dark matter candidate has been detected by any scientific experiment. Now, a team of researchers has suggested a design for a new dark matter experiment, one that relies on…

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz May 13

Physics Mystery Gets Even Deeper After Long-Awaited Muon Reveal

Inside a locked cabinet, an envelope held a number that was poised to rock the physics community, regardless of its contents. The value, a clock measurement deliberately hidden to keep physicists’ data analysis unbiased, would be used in a calculation that could either bring one of particle physics’ foremost mysteries to an end—or take it…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 7

Physicists Discover the Elusive Odderon, First Predicted 50 Years Ago

Scientists are celebrating the long-sought discovery of the odderon, a strange phenomenon that appears only rarely when protons collide at high energies, such as inside particle accelerators. Though the odderon was first predicted to exist in the early 1970s, it wasn’t until recently that physicists finally gathered the data they needed at CERN’s Large Hadron…

Physics & Chemistry Rose Pastore Mar 19

9 Conspiracy Theories We Wish QAnon People Would Obsess Over Instead

QAnon is, unfortunately, one of the most popular conspiracy theories in town these days. But let’s not forget that there are conspiracy theories that are way more interesting and far less of a threat to American democracy. For those unaware, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that, in general, claims we are governed by Satan-worshipping pedophiles—which…

Tech News Jody Serrano Mar 17

Russian Scientists Drop a Telescope Into the Deepest Lake on Earth

On Saturday, a team of Russian researchers dropped a brand-new telescope into frigid Lake Baikal, the deepest lake on Earth. It wasn’t an accident; the instrument took the plunge to give the scientists a better shot at detecting neutrinos, elusive subatomic particles that are extremely difficult to spot, since they usually pass right through matter…

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Mar 17

A Prime Suspect for Dark Matter Might Be Escaping From Neutron Stars

After axions were first theorized by physicists in the suburbs of Chicago 45 years ago, they quickly became a robust candidate for explaining dark matter. All this time, though, the ultra-small particles have remained hypothetical. Now, a team of astrophysicists have proposed that axions may be responsible for an excess of X-ray emissions seen coming…

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Jan 18

A Dark Matter Detector Based on a Wind Chime Seems Just Weird Enough to Work

Dark matter physicists may have one of the most frustrating jobs in science. Their work deals with something that must, by almost all models of the universe, exist. But we’ve never found any direct evidence for dark matter. Where other scientists can capture their subjects in a lab and perform experiments on it, scholars of…

Physics & Chemistry Nathaniel Scharping Nov 10

Extremely Sensitive Dark Matter Experiment Detects Something Weird

A mysterious signal has appeared in an extremely sensitive dark matter-hunting experiment. And after more than a year of trying to convince themselves that they were looking at noise, scientists think they might have found something new. Today, the scientists behind the XENON1T dark matter experiment are reporting the result of a search through its…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jun 17

Why the U.S. Is Betting It All on the Most Puzzling Particle in the Universe

Nearly 14 billion years ago, a universe appeared in an unthinkably high-energy blast. Particles started to materialize out of that energy, as did their antiparticles, which are kind of like evil twins, a mirror image with the opposite electric charge. Each and every particle had an antiparticle, scientists believe, and they would annihilate each other…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 19

These Are the Machines Solving the Biggest Mysteries in Physics

Despite the stereotype of a lone, wild-haired Einstein working tirelessly at a chalkboard, today’s biggest discoveries in physics come from huge collaborations of scientists working on enormous apparatuses that can cost billions of dollars, often located in the most extreme places on Earth. After all, it’s just the fabric universe they’re trying to understand. In…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum May 4

New Analysis of Large Hadron Collider Results Confirms Something Weird Is Happening

A theory-defying anomaly has persisted in the latest results from a Large Hadron Collider experiment, according to new results. The world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, contains a host of experiments that seek to answer the unanswered questions about the nature of the universe. Mostly, these experiments have ruled out…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 11

A Typical Neutron Star Is Only 13.6 Miles Wide, According to New Ultra-Precise Measurement

A typical neutron star measures 22 kilometers (13.6 miles) wide, according to new research. It’s the most accurate measurement yet of these highly compact, super-dense objects. If black holes are the most extreme phenomena in the universe, then neutron stars have to be a close second (unless quark stars exist, which has yet to be…

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky Mar 10

Graphic: V.Springel, Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Garching bei München

A Wild, Six-Quark Particle Might Have Been Dark Matter All Along

Most of the matter in the universe is undetectable in any way except for the gravity it exerts. While some think this mysterious “dark matter” must be made up of unknown particles, others suggest a familiar particle could be the key. Dark matter has remained elusive, despite many searches to find something that could explain…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 10

Release the Muons! Physics Breakthrough Will Lead to a New Kind of Particle Collider

The next generation of atom smasher could be a 100-kilometer-round ring, costing over $10 billion, with no promise of finding something as glamorous as last decade’s Higgs boson. But does the future of physics need to be so large? What if researchers could probe the secrets of the smallest particles using technology that was, well,…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Feb 5

This Locked Cabinet Holds the Answer to One of the Biggest Questions in Particle Physics

A 50-foot ring topped with white insulation sits attached to wires, pipes, and other electrical components in a warehouse on Fermilab’s northern Illinois campus. Scientists taking data with this device have the potential to rock the field of particle physics to its core, but they’re missing a crucial number to make their final calculation: the…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jan 25

A Famous Dark Matter Signal Is Probably Coming From Something Else

When Will Force Shields Be Real?

Dark Energy Could Be Responsible for Mysterious Experiment Signals, Researchers Say

What to Know About the Newly Discovered Tetraquark at the Large Hadron Collider

Young Physicists Are Shaping the Next Generation of Discoveries

If We Live in a Sea of Dark Matter, This Tiny Mirror Might Be Able to Detect It

Physics Mystery Gets Even Deeper After Long-Awaited Muon Reveal

Physicists Discover the Elusive Odderon, First Predicted 50 Years Ago

9 Conspiracy Theories We Wish QAnon People Would Obsess Over Instead

Russian Scientists Drop a Telescope Into the Deepest Lake on Earth

A Prime Suspect for Dark Matter Might Be Escaping From Neutron Stars

A Dark Matter Detector Based on a Wind Chime Seems Just Weird Enough to Work

Extremely Sensitive Dark Matter Experiment Detects Something Weird

Why the U.S. Is Betting It All on the Most Puzzling Particle in the Universe

These Are the Machines Solving the Biggest Mysteries in Physics

New Analysis of Large Hadron Collider Results Confirms Something Weird Is Happening

A Typical Neutron Star Is Only 13.6 Miles Wide, According to New Ultra-Precise Measurement

A Wild, Six-Quark Particle Might Have Been Dark Matter All Along

Release the Muons! Physics Breakthrough Will Lead to a New Kind of Particle Collider

This Locked Cabinet Holds the Answer to One of the Biggest Questions in Particle Physics

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