Particle physics

Supermassive black holes have been known to belch gigantic beams of plasma into space – and now scientists have managed to recreate these fireballs in a lab at CERN.

Professor Peter Higgs has died aged 94. The theoretical physicist was best known for his prediction of a key elementary particle, the Higgs boson, which earned him the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics soon after its discovery.

It’s a fundamental principle of physics that particles with opposite charges attract each other, while those with the same charge repel. Scientists have now discovered that under certain conditions, particles can attract those of the same charge.

Using off-the-shelf industrial parts, a team of researchers from the public and private sectors has created a prototype of a small particle accelerator that could have a big impact bringing the technology forward for commercial applications.

Scientists at MIT have directly captured signs of “second sound” in a superfluid for the first time. This bizarre phenomenon occurs when heat moves like sound waves through an unusual state of matter.

As spooky season wraps, NASA has a final Halloween treat. Using two X-ray telescopes, astronomers have visualized the ‘bones’ in one of space's most haunting phenomena, the pulsar wind nebula MSH 15-52, also known as the ‘cosmic hand' or 'hand of God'.

While studying a material that could help unlock the secrets of superconductors, scientists have accidentally discovered a “demon” particle that was first theorized almost 70 years ago, but had never been experimentally confirmed.

Physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a completely new type of quantum entanglement, the spooky phenomenon that binds particles across any distance. This allowed scientists to peer inside nuclei in more detail than ever before.

The first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere has been officially opened. The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is built in a disused gold mine in Australia, giving it a unique position on the globe for detecting dark matter.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson. But what exactly is this particle, and why is it so important? What has it taught us in the last decade – and more importantly, what could it teach us in the next decade?

The world’s most sensitive dark matter detector is ready to tackle one of the most perplexing mysteries of the universe. Over 50 times more sensitive than others, LUX-ZEPLIN lurks quietly a mile underground, waiting for these hypothetical particles.

The movements of the Sun, Moon and stars have long been used to keep track of time, and now engineers from the University of Tokyo have proposed a new way to use the cosmos to precisely track time, using showers of particles from cosmic rays.