The particles that are in an atom: protons, neutrons and electrons The particles that are in protons and neutrons: quarks The four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and ...

In the literal sense, nothing is simpler than an elementary particle: By definition, a particle is considered to be elementary only if there is no evidence that it is made up of smaller constituents.

A committee-supported project or activity that has been completed and for which output dissemination has begun. Its committee has been disbanded and closeout procedures are underway. Elementary ...

Physics has demonstrated that the everyday phenomena we experience are governed by universal principles applying at time and distance scales far beyond normal human experience. Physics has ...

Extremely massive fundamental particles could exist, but they would seriously mess with our understanding of quantum mechanics. Fundamental particles are objects that are so small, they have no deeper ...

Ten years ago, scientists announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, which helps explain why elementary particles (the smallest building blocks of nature) have mass. For particle physicists, this was ...

Every few years, scientists take a step back to take a broader look at their field and determine what questions are most pressing—and what tools they will need to answer those questions. This year the ...

The model we have for understanding the universe’s fundamental particles is a bit like a gearbox: one tiny change to any one single particles’ properties throws off the mechanics of the other ...

The muon is a tiny particle, but it has the giant potential to upend our understanding of the subatomic world and reveal an undiscovered type of fundamental physics. The muon is a tiny particle, but ...

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is designed to probe the fringes of known physics, and now the facility has found particles not behaving as predicted. While it’s still early days, the discovery ...

Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook Gordon Kane, physics professor at the University of Michigan, was awarded the 2017 J.J. Sakurai ...

Something genuinely strange has just happened in fundamental physics: an underground neutrino telescope in the Mediterranean ...