Astrophysicists Develop a Novel Approach for Searching for Dark Matter
Scientists use archival images of Jupiter to search for dark matter collisions.
Particle physics
Journey to the Center of the Proton: Using Supercomputers to Probe The Pieces of the Atom
Pressure is felt as the force exerted on bodies when they are submerged in a material; you’ve felt it as you dive to the bottom of the pool and when you uncork a bottle. Recently, scientists have measured the pressure within a proton, a particle that…
The Electron Electric Dipole Moment: How the Shape of the Electron’s Field could Hint at New Particles
The matter in our universe is made of atoms; atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons; and protons and neutrons are made of quarks. In our current theory of particle physics, electrons and quarks are elementary particles–they are the…
Sticky Light: Physicists discover new Photon Interactions
Light is made of little particles called photons that usually don’t interact. Imagine how strange it would be if the light from your window ricocheted off the light from computer screen! Our brains couldn’t make sense of these images and we’d be…
Particle Physics Revolutionizes Archaeology
How many mysteries are buried within Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza? Whatever the answer, we know of one more. Scientists recently discovered an unknown void in the heart of the pyramid. Over the past centuries, archaeologists have unveiled many…
Scientists observe light from antimatter for the first time
Physicists at CERN have observed the light emitted from antimatter for the first time, bringing us one step closer to unraveling one of the longest-standing problems in physics today – why is it that regular matter is so much more abundant than…
New Physics from the AMS Experiment - Particle Physics on the International Space Station
The AMS Experiment on the International Space Station
In 2011 the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, was launched into space. AMS, housed by the International Space Station and led by a Nobel Prize winning principle investigator, is commonly referred…
New Experiment Chases the Elusive Magnetic Monopole
A new experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) seeks to detect the long theorized magnetic monopole. In 1931, physicist Paul Dirac showed that our theories of electromagnetism allow for the existence of a solitary magnetic charge. Just as protons…
Dark Matter Evades the World's Most Sensitive Search
At the 11th Identification of Dark Matter Conference, LUX, the Large Underground Xenon experiment, announced the results of the world’s most sensitive search for dark matter. Physicists at LUX have been racing for a dark matter discovery since the…
The long awaited and much debated discovery of the pentaquark
The pentaquark consists of four quarks, and one anti-quark. It is possible that the quarks are not all tightly bound together, as in this image, but consist of a structure that is closer to that of a hadron and meson bound like a moleculeImage uploaded…