Physics

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been churning out groundbreaking science ever since it went into operation in 2010. The giant particle accelerator, perched on the border of France and Switzerland, has gotten several upgrades over the years, and a new project is just getting underway now. CERN has broken …

In July 2012, ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) and CMS (Compact-Muon-Solenoid) experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider jointly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. The discovery confirmed the existence of the last missing elementary particle of the Standard Model, five decades after it was predicted theoretically. New results from …

A new study using X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory indicates that the neutron star merger that became the gravitational wave source, GW170817, likely created the lowest mass black hole known. The first artist’s illustration shows a key part of the process that created this new black hole, as …

A duo of astrophysicists is proposing a new model for the invisible material that makes up most of the Universe: it’s possible that a small fraction (less than 1%) of dark matter particles may have a tiny electrical charge — a million times smaller than the charge on the electron. …

A platinum-group chemical element called ruthenium (Ru) is the fourth single element to have unique ferromagnetic properties at room temperature. Ruthenium. Image credit: Metalle-W / CC BY-SA 3.0. Ferromagnetism is the basic mechanism by which certain materials form permanent magnets, or are attracted to magnets. The use of ferromagnetism reaches …

Sometime after August 2008, the US Department of Defence contracted lots of scientists to look into some really, very out-there aerospace innovations, consisting of never-before-seen approaches of propulsion, lift, and stealth. Two scientists returned with < a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/document/5b045ec5cc061c32008b530f/dia-warpdrives.pdf"> a 34-page report for the propulsion category, entitled “Warp Drive, Dark Energy, …

Physicists from the HAL QCD Collaboration predict the existence of a new type of dibaryon, a particle that contains six quarks instead of the usual three. Their work appears in the journal Physical Review Letters. di-Omega dibaryon. Image credit: Keiko Murano. Particles known as baryons (protons and neutrons) are composed …

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most complex device ever built by humanity, and it’s allowed us to explore previously unknowable realms of physics. However, there are still some missing pieces to the puzzle. Scientists hope that a comparatively modest new instrument near the LHC could spot those missing …

The proton, one of the components of atomic nuclei, is composed of fundamental particles called quarks and gluons. A team of physicists at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has found an extremely high outward-directed pressure from the center of the proton, and a much lower inward-directed …

The vacuum of space can get pretty chilly, but the International Space Station (ISS) is about to get even colder. NASA is sending up a new piece of equipment that will make one tiny part of the station about 10 billion times colder than space outside. When it’s up and …