The last great U.S. particle collider is no more. What comes next could be even better
After 25 years, Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider—the U.S.’s largest and only particle collider—has ceased operations, but its science lives on
Physicists trace particles back to the quantum vacuum
Scientists have found “strange quarks” that originated as virtual particles that sprang from nothing
China’s Giant Underground Neutrino Observatory Just Released Its First Results—And They’re Promising
Hidden beneath the hills of southern China, the JUNO observatory shows promise in solving neutrino mysteries
Scientists Measure the Temperature of the Universe Just after the Big Bang
Quark-gluon plasma, a bizarre state of matter that mimics the early cosmos, is the hottest thing ever made on Earth
Physicists Propose a Simpler, Hotter Origin for the Cosmos
Theorists have found that a “warm” version of cosmic inflation is consistent with known physics, linking it to the hunt for dark matter
What’s the Smallest Particle in the Universe?
The answer to this supposedly simple particle physics question isn’t so simple
U.S. Science and Scientific American Have Weathered Attacks Before and Won
Federal officials seized 3,000 copies of Scientific American in 1950 in a “red scare” era of attacks on science. The move backfired and offers lessons for today
Miniature Neutrino Detector Promises to Test the Laws of Physics
A relatively small detector caught neutrinos from a nuclear reactor using a technique known as coherent scattering
The U.S. Just Axed Its Boldest Cosmology Experiment in Generations
Researchers hoped CMB-S4, a $900-million cosmology experiment, would answer one of the greatest questions in physics. Instead it’s become another cautionary tale of pursuing big science amid shrinking budgets
Mysterious Antimatter Physics Discovered at the Large Hadron Collider
The LHCb experiment has observed a new difference between matter and antimatter in particles called baryons
Dark Matter ‘Droplets’ Could Solve Multiple Cosmic Mysteries
Inspired by superconductivity, a strange new theory that seeks to explain dark matter might explain dark energy, too
Do Wobbling Muons Point the Way to New Physics?
The most anticipated particle physics result of recent years is here—but the real news came one week before: the “muon g–2 anomaly” might have never existed