What holds the proton together— Science News, September 16, 1972 An experiment … at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva … gives an important clue to structural arrangements deep within the…
Category: Particle Physics
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
Protons may be intrinsically charming. The subatomic particles are a mash-up of three lighter particles called quarks: two of the type known as up quarks and one down quark. But…
Physicists spotted rare W boson trios at the Large Hadron Collider
The letters “www” are typically followed by a “dot” — but not in this experiment. Around 270 WWW events, trios of particles called W bosons, appeared in an experiment at…
The Windchime experiment could use gravity to hunt for dark matter ‘wind’
The secret to directly detecting dark matter might be blowin’ in the wind. The mysterious substance continues to elude scientists even though it outweighs visible matter in the universe by…
A new dark matter experiment quashed earlier hints of new particles
Potential hints of weird new particles in a dark matter detector have evaporated with new data. Following up on a beguiling result from its predecessor experiment, the XENONnT experiment found…
A supersensitive dark matter search found no signs of the substance — yet
The next generation of dark matter detectors has arrived. A massive new effort to detect the elusive substance has reported its first results. Following a time-honored tradition of dark matter…
How physicists are probing the Higgs boson 10 years after its discovery
Javier Duarte kicked off his scientific career by witnessing the biggest particle physics event in decades. On July 4, 2012, scientists at the laboratory CERN near Geneva announced the discovery…
How neutrinos could ensure a submarine’s nuclear fuel isn’t weaponized
Nuclear submarines might provide rogue nations with a path to nuclear weapons. But neutrinos could help reveal attempts to go from boats to bombs. Neutrinos, lightweight subatomic particles that are…
High-energy neutrinos may come from black holes ripping apart stars
When a star gets too close to a black hole, sparks fly. And, potentially, so do subatomic particles called neutrinos. A dramatic light show results when a supermassive black hole…
The Large Hadron Collider has restarted with upgraded proton-smashing potential
After a hiatus of more than three years, the Large Hadron Collider is back. Scientists shut down the particle accelerator in 2018 to allow for upgrades (SN: 12/3/18). On April…
