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Standard Model
Our Universe requires dark matter in order to make sense of things, astrophysically. Could massive photons do the trick?
Fermilab's TeVatron just released the best mass measurement of the W-boson, ever. Here's what doesn't add up.
More than any other of Einstein's equations, E = mc² is the most recognizable to people. But what does it all mean?
If the electromagnetic and weak forces unify to make the electroweak force, maybe, at even higher energies, something even greater happens?
There are two fundamentally different ways of measuring the Universe's expansion. They disagree. "Early dark energy" might save us.
New technology is helping physicists move forward in the search for the Theory of Everything.
Particle physics needs a new collider to supersede the Large Hadron Collider. Muons, not electrons or protons, might hold the key.
The majority of the matter in our Universe isn't made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?
Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]
More energy means more potential for discovery, but we’re topped out. If your goal is to discover something completely novel, you have to look in a way that no one else […]
Once merely a theoretical curiosity, they might be the key to understanding so much more. Out of all of the known particles — both fundamental and composite — there are a whole slew of properties […]
Whatever’s lurking out there, it isn’t all, or even mostly, normal matter. When it comes to the Universe, it’s only natural to wonder what, exactly, it is that makes everything up. […]
When you mix science with speculation, you get speculation. But the underlying science is still real. Whenever you hear the phrase, “it’s just a theory,” it should trigger alarm bells in […]
Only the best physical theories outlast the minds that invented them. Throughout the 20th century, a number of discoveries revolutionized our Universe. The discovery of the interior structure of atoms as […]
Do they have real, observable effects, or are they merely calculational tools?
Deniers will never stop misleading others. Here’s the truth. Every so often, advocates of a fringe theory — one that doesn’t fit the evidence as well as the mainstream theory — do what they can […]
And which ones are probably examples where we’ve fooled ourselves? Every once in a while — multiple times per year — a new research finding fails to line up with our theoretical expectations. In […]
The Big Theoretical Physics Problem At The Center Of The ‘Muon g-2’ Puzzle In early April, 2021, the experimental physics community announced an enormous victory: they had measured the muon’s magnetic […]
The mismatch between theory and experiment is anything but certain. The most exciting moments in a scientist’s life occur when you get a result that defies your expectations. Whether you’re a […]
Even 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, we can reconstruct the first 3 minutes. About 100 years ago, we began to truly understand the nature of the Universe for the […]
We need more and better data to know, but that’s exactly what’s coming. Over the past few decades, a number of important advances have helped revolutionize our picture of the Universe. […]
Is a proton fundamentally more ‘quarky’ or ‘gluey’ in nature? One question that every curious child winds up asking at some point or other is, “what are things made of?” Every […]
Dark matter was thought to be cold and collisionless. But maybe that’s not the full story. If you look out at the Universe and measure all the matter out there, including […]
Using atoms to probe the Universe reveals the complete Standard Model. If you wanted to uncover the secrets of the Universe for yourself, all you’d have to do is interrogate […]
If you think it’s just three quarks held together by gluons, you’ll want to read this. At a fundamental level, the Universe is composed of indivisible particles. From macroscopic scales down […]
Science was never the same after meeting ‘the particle who lived.’ Back in the early 1930s, there were only a few known fundamental particles that made up the Universe. If you […]
There’s a lot to get rid of if we want to get only our Universe out of String Theory. A lot of people, when they learn about String Theory for the […]
A cosmic puzzle is finally solved, as new observations answer the question of why this galaxy exists at all. For the last couple of years, astronomy has had a tremendous puzzle […]
And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]
In our Universe, a left hand reflected in a mirror or pond appears to be a right hand. While most of the laws of nature are symmetric under reflections, obeying […]