Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step. In a typical…
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A well-known wildflower turns out to be a secret carnivore
Gleaming, gluey, deathtrap hairs have betrayed the secret identity of a well-known wildflower: It’s a carnivore. A species of false asphodel (Triantha occidentalis) uses enzyme-secreting hairs on its flowering stem…
Protons’ antimatter is even more lopsided than we thought
The proton’s antimatter is out of whack. An imbalance between two types of antiparticles that seethe within the proton is even wonkier than previously thought, a new measurement indicates. Protons…
50 years ago, scientists were on a quest for quarks
More about partons — Science News, February 13, 1971 Experiments in which protons and neutrons were bombarded with high-energy electrons have given indications that protons and neutrons are not amorphous…
This is the first known particle with four of the same kind of quark
In a never-before-seen particle, four quarks of a feather flock together. Physicists think they have detected the first conglomerate of four quarks incorporating more than two of the same kind.…
Physicists spot a new class of neutrinos from the sun
Neutrinos spit out by the main processes that power the sun are finally accounted for, physicists report. Two sets of nuclear fusion reactions predominate in the sun’s core and both…
An unexpected result from a dark matter experiment may signal new particles
An experiment searching for cosmic dark matter may have finally detected something. But it’s not dark matter. Scientists with the XENON1T experiment reported data June 17 showing an unexpectedly large…
Measuring the neutron’s lifetime from space could solve an enduring mystery
To really understand neutrons, physicists may have to take to space. When outside the confines of an atomic nucleus, a neutron decays into other particles in about 15 minutes on…
A star shredded by a black hole may have spit out an extremely energetic neutrino
A neutrino that plowed into the Antarctic ice offers up a cautionary message: Don’t stray too close to the edge of an abyss. The subatomic particle may have been blasted…
A controversial X-ray glow didn’t show up in the Milky Way’s dark matter halo
Glowing X-rays around distant galaxies can’t come from dark matter particles, new research shows. The mysterious glow failed to show up in the dark matter halo around the Milky Way,…
