particle physics

Times dilate and lengths contract near the speed of light. Bizarre and confusing? Sure. But under relativity, it can’t be any other way.

Scientists are notoriously resistant to new ideas. Are they falling prey to groupthink? Or are our current theories just that successful?

Physicist Daniel Whiteson challenges the notion that all intelligent species would eventually uncover the same laws of nature. Do you agree?

Nearly 100 years after being theorized, the strange behavior of the neutrino still mystifies us. They could be even stranger than we know.

Investment in quantum is growing. Anastasia Marchenkova wants to make sure funders still ask the tough questions.

We’ve long known we can’t go back to infinite temperatures and densities. But the hottest part of the hot Big Bang remains a cosmic mystery.

The whole isn’t greater than the sum of its parts; that’s a flaw in our thinking. Non-reductionism requires magic, not merely science.

Inflation’s two main criticisms, that it can predict anything and that the “measure problem” remains unsolved, can’t erase its successes.

Our Sun only arose after 9.2 billion years of cosmic history: with many stars living and dying first. How many prior generations were there?

Quantum mechanics was first discovered on small, microscopic scales. 2025’s Nobel Prize brings the quantum and large-scale worlds together.

Proposed over 2000 years ago by Democritus, the word atom literally means uncuttable. Revived in 1803, today’s “atoms” can indeed be split.

Just because a paper passes peer review doesn’t mean that what’s written, or what the author asserts, is true. Here’s why it still matters.

The Holy Grail of physics is a Theory of Everything: where a single equation describes the whole Universe. But maybe there simply isn’t one?

Since even before Einstein, physicists have sought a theory of everything to explain the Universe. Can positive geometry lead us there?

Across all wavelengths of light, the Sun is brighter than the Moon. Until we went to the highest energies and saw a gamma-ray surprise.

When you don’t have enough clues to bring your detective story to a close, you should expect that your educated guesses will all be wrong.

Throughout history, “free energy” has been a scammer’s game, such as perpetual motion. But with zero-point energy, is it actually possible?

There could be variables beyond the ones we’ve identified and know how to measure. But they can’t get rid of quantum weirdness.

A next-generation collider is required for studying particle physics at the frontiers. Here’s the fastest, cheapest way to get it done.

Parallel universes are among the most profound notions in all of quantum physics. It’s a compelling and fascinating idea, but is it true?

Amplifying the energy within a laser, over and over, won’t get you an infinite amount of energy. There’s a fundamental limit due to physics.

Realizing that matter and energy are quantized is important, but quantum particles aren’t the full story; quantum fields are needed, too.

With the right material at the right temperature and a magnetic track, physics really does allow perpetual motion without energy loss.

Whether you run the clock forward or backward, most of us expect the laws of physics to be the same. A 2012 experiment showed otherwise.

Once you cross a black hole’s event horizon, there’s no going back. But inside, could creating a singularity give birth to a new Universe?

From high school through the professional ranks, physicists still take incredible lessons away from Newton’s second law.

No matter what it is that we discover about reality, the fact that reality itself can be understood remains the most amazing fact of all.

Will we build a successor collider to the LHC? Someday, we’ll reach the true limit of what experiments can probe. But that won’t be the end.

The measured value of the cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude smaller than what’s predicted. How can this paradox be resolved?

Can the top quark, the shortest-lived particle of all, bind with anything else? Yes it can! New results at the LHC demonstrate toponium exists.