particle

A Rare, Repeatedly Exploding Star Has Been Caught Producing Powerful Gamma Rays

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A rare star that repeatedly explodes appears to be also generating the most energetic form of light in the Universe. Analysis of an eruption from the binary system RS Ophiuchi has revealed that the shock wave expanding out into space acts as a particle accelerator that generates gamma radiation. This suggests the conditions that generate … Read more

World’s largest particle physics lab suspends political ties with Russia | Science

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In responding to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the politicians who control the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, are trying to strike a delicate balance. In a special session, the CERN Council, which is composed of representatives from the laboratory’s 23 member nations, voted to suspend the “observer” privileges of the Russian Federation, CERN announced today. … Read more

‘Ghost particle’ coming into focus: Scientists put upper limit on mass of neutrinos

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Every second, about 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body. These ghostly particles are fundamental to our understanding of the universe. But they’re extremely small — so small that scientists once thought they had no mass at all.  Neutrinos do indeed have mass, however, and physicists have now managed to put a new upper limit … Read more

Chien-Shiung Wu | Particle physicist denied a Nobel prize

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At its heart, physics is the study of symmetries. In the 1950s Chien-Shiung Wu made a fundamental discovery about how under certain circumstances a fundamental symmetry of the particle world, known as parity symmetry, could be broken – but she never got full recognition for the achievement. Symmetry is important because by observing how, under … Read more

Mind-Bending New Multiverse Scenario Could Explain a Strange Higgs Boson Feature

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When researchers at the Large Hadron Collider discovered the elusive Higgs particle in 2012, it was a landmark for particle physics. It solved a very thorny problem, validating and allowing the Standard Model of particle physics to hold.   But, as is often the case with new discoveries, while some questions were neatly answered, others … Read more

‘X particle’ from the dawn of time detected inside the Large Hadron Collider

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Physicists at the world’s largest atom smasher have detected a mysterious, primordial particle from the dawn of time. About 100 of the short-lived “X” particles — so named because of their unknown structures — were spotted for the first time amid trillions of other particles inside the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle … Read more

Physicists Detect Mysterious X Particles in ‘Primordial Soup’ For The First Time

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A mysterious particle thought to have existed briefly just after the Big Bang has now been detected for the first time in the ‘primordial soup’. Specifically, in a medium called the quark-gluon plasma, generated in the Large Hadron Collider by colliding lead ions. There, amid the trillions of particles produced by these collisions, physicists managed … Read more