Inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza lies a mysterious cavity, its void unseen by any living human, its surface untouched by modern hands. But luckily, scientists are no longer limited…
Category: Particle Physics
A new nuclear imaging prototype detects tumors’ faint glow
A type of light commonly observed in astrophysics experiments and nuclear reactors can help detect cancer. In a clinical trial, a prototype of an imaging machine that relies on this…
The W boson might be extra hefty. If so, it could hint at new physics
There’s something amiss with a mass. A new measurement of the mass of an elementary particle, the W boson, has defied expectations. The result hints at a possible flaw in…
How light from black holes is narrowing the search for axions
The search for a hypothetical subatomic particle that could signal new physics just narrowed a bit — thanks to the light swirling around a gargantuan black hole in another galaxy.…
A new particle accelerator aims to unlock secrets of bizarre atomic nuclei
Inscribed on an Italian family’s 15th century coat of arms and decorating an ancient Japanese shrine, the Borromean rings are symbolically potent. Remove one ring from the trio of linked…
Doubt cast on theorized ‘sterile’ particles leaves a neutrino mystery unsolved
For decades, physicists have suspected an interloper. A reclusive, hypothetical subatomic particle might be creeping into studies of neutrinos, nearly massless particles with no electric charge. A new study casts…
How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality
At every moment, subatomic particles stream in unfathomable numbers through your body. Each second, about 100 billion neutrinos from the sun pass through your thumbnail, and you’re bathed in a…
Physicists dream big with an idea for a particle collider on the moon
If you could peer into a particle physicist’s daydream, you might spy a vision of a giant lunar particle accelerator. Now, researchers have calculated what such an enormous, hypothetical machine…
In a first, neutrinos were caught interacting at the Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider’s claim to fame is its ability to unveil elusive subatomic particles. But there’s one class of particle that it had never directly detected, even though it…
The thickness of lead’s neutron ‘skin’ has been precisely measured
Some atomic nuclei are thin-skinned — they’re surrounded by a slim shell of neutrons. Physicists now know how thick that neutron skin is for one particular type of nucleus. The…
