Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Jan 31, 2019

Hyperfast Shock Waves from a Supernova Heat Atoms to Blazing-Hot Temperatures

On Feb. 23, 1987, the light from a giant, exploding star reached Earth. The event, which took place in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy 168,000 light-years away that circles our Milky Way, was the closest supernova to occur in nearly 400 years, and the first since the invention...

Feb 22, 2019

A 'Dragon Aurora' Appeared in the Sky Over Iceland, and NASA Is a Little Confused

A gargantuan green dragon hisses in the sky over Iceland. Either Game of Thrones really upped its production budget for its final season, or the sun belched a barrage of charged particles into our atmosphere again. As much as any of us would like to see a real dragon breathe...

Feb 25, 2019

Physicists Just Solved a 35-Year-Old Mystery Hidden Inside Atomic Cores

Here's a mysterious truth that scientists have known since 1983: Protons and neutrons act differently when they're inside an atom, versus floating freely through space. Specifically, the subatomic particles that make up those protons and neutrons, called quarks, slow down massively once they're confined to a nucleus in an atom....

Mar 1, 2019

Where Are All the 'Sparticles' That Could Explain What's Wrong with the Universe?

The governing theory of particle physics explains everything about the subatomic world … except for the parts that it doesn't. And unfortunately, there aren't a lot of flattering adjectives that can be applied to the so-called Standard Model. Built up bit by bit over the course of decades, this theory...

Apr 1, 2019

Physicists Just Detected a Very Odd Particle That Isn't a Particle at All

It sounds like the start of a very bad physics riddle: I'm a particle that really isn't; I vanish before I can even be detected, yet can be seen. I break your understanding of physics but don't overhaul your knowledge. Who am I? It's an odderon, a particle that's even...

Apr 17, 2019

The Quest to Find One of the Most Elusive Particle Decays in the Universe

Transmuting one element into another (usually gold, of course) was the stuff of fevered dreams and fanciful imaginations for alchemists way back in the day. It turns out that nature does it all the time without any help from us — though not usually into gold. This natural alchemy, called...

Apr 23, 2019

What Makes the Strong Force So Special?

All four known forces of nature have their own unique place. Gravity, electromagnetism, weak nuclear, strong nuclear: Each one governing some little domain of our lives. While our everyday experiences are dominated by the gravity of the Earth and the electromagnetism of light and fridge magnets, the twin nuclear forces...

Apr 24, 2019

The World's Largest Atom Smasher Could Be Tweaked to Hunt 'Dark World' Particles

Scientists may have a new way to peer into physics' dark world. In a new paper, theoretical physicists say they have a new plan for searching for theoretical particles that, so far, have never been observed. These particles, dubbed long-lived particles, or LLPs, could be a window into dark matter...

Apr 25, 2019

Inside Giant Atom Smasher, Physicists See the Impossible: Light Interacting with Light

In case you didn't realize it, photons are tiny little bits of light. In fact, they're the smallest bit of light possible. When you turn on a lamp, gigantic numbers of photons spring from that bulb and slam into your eyes, where they are absorbed by your retina and turned...

Apr 29, 2019

Faster-Than-Light Particles Emit Superbright Gamma Rays that Circle Pulsars

Charged particles travel faster than light through the quantum vacuum of space that surrounds pulsars. As these electrons and protons fly by pulsars, they create the ultrabright gamma-ray flashes emitted by the rapidly twirling neutron stars, new research reveals. These gamma-rays, called Cherenkov emissions, are also found in powerful particle...

Jun 5, 2019

Physicists Search for Monstrous Higgs Particle. It Could Seal the Fate of the Universe.

We all know and love the Higgs boson — which to physicists' chagrin has been mistakenly tagged in the media as the God particle — a subatomic particle first spotted in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) back in 2012. That particle is a piece of a field that permeates all...

Jul 8, 2019

These Odd 'Quasiparticles' Could Finally Unmask Dark Matter

About 80% of all the matter in the cosmos is of a form completely unknown to current physics. We call it dark matter, because as best we can tell it's…dark. Experiments around the world are attempting to capture a stray dark matter particle in hopes of understanding it, but so...

Aug 19, 2019

'Evil-Genius' Neutrino Gun Could Finally Unmask the Tiniest Particles in the Universe

Neutrinos are perhaps the most underrated particles known to humankind. Physicist, smart guy and smart aleck Wolfgang Pauli first proposed their existence in 1930 as a missing puzzle piece — certain nuclear reactions had more going in than they had coming out. Pauli reasoned that something tiny and invisible had...

Aug 23, 2019

Physicists Finally Narrowed Down the Mass of the Tiniest 'Ghost Particle' in the Universe

We're full of neutrinos all the time. They're everywhere, nearly undetectable, flitting through normal matter. We barely know anything about them — not even how heavy they are. But we do know that neutrinos have the potential to alter the shape of the entire universe. And because they have that...

Aug 23, 2019

A Rail Gun the Size of Manhattan Could Reveal the Secrets of the Higgs Boson

Nobody messes with the Large Hadron Collider. It's the supreme particle smasher of the present age, and nothing can touch its energy capabilities or ability to study the frontiers of physics. But all glory is transitory, and nothing lasts forever. Eventually, somewhere around 2035, the lights at this 17-mile-long (27...