Particle Physics, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2007

MIT Researchers Improve 'Tractor Beam'

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Taking up the sci-fi staple of tractor beams,'' scientists have developed a way to use light to grab and move minuscule particles on a microchip. The research could lead to fine-grained biological sensors and other precisely built nanoscale devices. The work by Massachusetts Institute of Technology...

Jun 30, 2011

Physicists Discover New Subatomic Particle

High-speed collisions at a giant atom smasher have produced what physicists say is a new particle, a heavier relative of the familiar neutron. The particle is called the neutral Xi-sub-b. When it's formed in the Fermilab Tevatron particle accelerator in Batavia, Ill., the neutral Xi-sub-b lasts just a mere instant...

Mar 31, 2011

Scientists Abuzz Over Controversial Rumor that God Particle Has Been Detected

A rumor is floating around the physics community that the world's largest atom smasher may have detected a long-sought subatomic particle called the Higgs boson, also known as the God particle. The controversial rumor is based on what appears to be a leaked internal note from physicists at the Large...

Jun 30, 2012

Who Deserves a Higgs Boson Nobel? One Scientist, or Many

There's the science, and then there's the glitter. As researchers celebrate the best-yet evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, some are already thinking about who's going to get the Nobel Prize in physics for the seminal discovery. Stephen Hawking told the BBC that he thinks Peter Higgs, who...

Jun 30, 2015

Dark Pion Particles May Explain Universe's Invisible Matter

Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might resemble a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics. The only...

Mar 31, 2015

What's Next for the World's Largest Atom Smasher? How to Watch Live

Physicist Jon Butterworth, who works at the world's largest atom smasher, is intimately familiar with the drama that surrounded the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. Butterworth will recount the trials and tribulations in the hunt for the most wanted particle, in a lecture tonight (April 1) at the Perimeter...

Mar 31, 2015

The World's Most Powerful Atom Smasher Restarts With a Big Bang

The world's most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, which provides a window into the universe just milliseconds after the Big Bang, came back to life this morning, after more than two years of maintenance and upgrade work, and it's stronger than ever. At 10:41 a.m. local time near...

Jan 31, 2018

How a Student Photographed a Single Atom With a Store-Bought Camera

Look closely and you'll see it: a pale, purple pixel hanging in a black field between two cylindrical needles.What looks like a shimmering speck of dust is actually something much, much smaller: a single atom of strontium, isolated in an ion-trap machine at the University of Oxford. That's small. Really...

May 22, 2018

Nuclear Detectives Hunt Invisible Particles That Escaped the World's Largest Atom Smasher

A few years from now, if a crew of physicists gets its way, a squat building will rise above the border between France and Switzerland. This warehouse-size annex will join a scientific facility so large it crosses national borders. And, if the researchers proposing the construction are correct, it just...

Jun 1, 2018

A Major Physics Experiment Just Detected a Particle That Shouldn't Exist

Scientists have produced the firmest evidence yet of so-called sterile neutrinos, mysterious particles that pass through matter without interacting with it at all. The first hints these elusive particles turned up decades ago. But after years of dedicated searches, scientists have been unable to find any other evidence for them,...

Jun 4, 2018

The Higgs Boson Has a New Friend

The Higgs boson appeared again at the world's largest atom smasher — this time, alongside a top quark and an antitop quark, the heaviest known fundamental particles. And this new discovery could help scientists better understand why fundamental particles have the mass they do. When scientists at the Large Hadron...

Jul 12, 2018

Why a 4-Billion-Year-Old Particle That Hit Antarctica Is Such a Big Deal

A single, high-energy neutrino struck Earth on Sept. 22, 2017. It came from a distant galaxy, wrapped around a supermassive black hole. And, beginning with a blockbuster paper published today (July 12) in the journal Science and signed by hundreds of scientists spread across dozens of laboratories, it's leading giddy...

Jul 30, 2018

Large Hadron Collider Just Spat Electron-ified Atoms to Almost the Speed of Light

Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) achieved yet another first Wednesday (July 25), revving full-blown atoms (with electrons oribiting them) up to near the speed of light. The question of whether these were truly the first atoms that humans have accelerated to these speeds is a bit semantic;...

Aug 28, 2018

First-Ever Observation of Higgs Boson Decay Opens New Doors for Particle Physics

If you’ve been a science fan for the last few years, you’re aware of the exciting results to emerge from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which in 2012 found the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle responsible for giving mass to fundamental subatomic particles. Today, physicists have another exciting announcement to...

Sep 10, 2018

Happy Birthday, LHC: Here's to 10 Years of Atom Smashing at the Large Hadron Collider

Ten years ago, the world's largest scientific instrument was turned on and the start of a research dynasty began. On Sept. 10, 2008, a beam of protons was shot for the first time around the entire 16.5-mile-long (27 kilometers) ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) — the world's largest...