Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 20, 2022

Bizarre Particles Keep Flying Out of Antarctica's Ice, and They Might Shatter Modern Physics

There's something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it. Physicists don't know what it is exactly. But they do know it's some sort of cosmic ray — a high-energy particle that's blasted its way through space, into the Earth,...

Sep 20, 2022

Misbehaving Particles Poke Holes in Reigning Physics Theory

The reigning theory of particle physics may be flawed, according to new evidence that a subatomic particle decays in a certain way more often than it should, scientists announced. This theory, called the Standard Model, is the best handbook scientists have to describe the tiny bits of matter that make...

Sep 20, 2022

Higgs Boson Confirms Reigning Physics Model Yet Again

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 7:20 p.m. E.T. For a subatomic particle that remained hidden for nearly 50 years, the Higgs boson is turning out to be remarkably well behaved. Yet more evidence from the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland, confirms that...

Oct 14, 2022

Plasma Waves Studied for New Electronics

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? After nearly 25 years as an electrical engineer in semiconductor development and manufacturing, I headed back to school as an NSF Integrative Graduate Education...

Oct 14, 2022

Atomic Clock Is So Precise It Won't Lose a Second for 15 Billion Years

An atomic clock that sets the time by the teensy oscillations of strontium atoms has gotten so precise and stable that it will neither gain nor lose a second for the next 15 billion years. The strontium clock, which is about three times as precise as the previous record holder,...

Mar 22, 2023

'Ghostly' neutrinos spotted inside the world's largest particle accelerator for the first time

For the very first time, physicists have created and detected high-energy ghost particles inside the world's largest atom smasher. The findings could help unlock the secrets of how stars go supernova. The tiny particles, known as neutrinos, were spotted by the FASER neutrino detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)...

Apr 11, 2023

Scientists create 'slits in time' in mind-bending physics experiment

In a first, scientists have shown that they can send light through slits in time. The new experiment is a twist on a 220-year-old demonstration, in which light shines through two slits in a screen to create a unique diffraction pattern across space, where the peaks and troughs of the...

Apr 17, 2023

Gravity can transform into light, mind-bending physics paper suggests

Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, the Standard Model of particle physics, the reigning theory that explains the subatomic zoo of particles, usually forbids the...

Jun 21, 2023

Exotic new state of matter discovered by squishing subatomic particles into an ultradense crystal

Physicists have discovered an exotic new state of matter that takes the form of a highly ordered crystal of subatomic particles. The new state of matter, called a bosonic correlated insulator, could lead to the discovery of many new types of exotic materials made from condensed matter, according to the...

Jun 27, 2023

Scientists tried to solve the mystery of the helium nucleus — and ended up more confused than ever

One of nature's simplest elements is giving scientists a big headache after new research shows that protons and neutrons in helium atoms are not behaving as theory suggests they should. The mismatch between theoretical predictions of how these particles behave and what they're actually doing could point to new physics...

Jun 29, 2023

Neutrino map of the galaxy is 1st view of the Milky Way in 'anything other than light'

Scientists have traced the galactic origins of thousands of ghost particles known as neutrinos to create the first-ever portrait of the Milky Way made from matter and not light — and it's given them a brand-new way to study the universe. The groundbreaking image was snapped by capturing the neutrinos...

Aug 31, 2023

What is the strong force?

The strong force or strong nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, along with gravity, electromagnetism and the weak force. As the name suggests, the strong force is the strongest force of the four. It binds fundamental particles of matter, known as quarks, to form larger...

Oct 25, 2023

World's smallest particle accelerator is 54 million times smaller than the Large Hadron Collider, and it works

Scientists recently fired up the world's smallest particle accelerator for the first time. The tiny technological triumph, which is around the size of a small coin, could open the door to a wide range of applications, including using the teensy particle accelerators inside human patients. The new machine, known as...

Mar 13, 2024

Mysterious 'unparticles' may be pushing the universe apart, new theoretical study suggests

The ever-accelerating expansion of the universe may be driven by a mysterious form of matter called unparticles, which do not obey the Standard Model of particle physics, a new theoretical paper suggests. Scientists widely acknowledge that the universe is expanding, though the cause of that expansion remains elusive. One of...

Apr 30, 2013

Mathematician Who Proved Map-Coloring Theorem Has Died

Kenneth Appel, one of the first mathematicians to solve a famous mathematical proof using a computer, died April 19 at the age of 80. In 1976, Appel helped prove the four-color theorem, which states that any map can be colored in using just four colors, without bordering territories using the...