An unforeseen feature in proton-proton collisions previously observed by the CMS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider ...

But axions were pushed aside as the WIMPs hypothesis gained more steam. Back-of-the-envelope calculations showed that the natural mass range of the WIMP would precisely match the abundances needed to ...

Studying a new, very heavy particle helps us view underlying physical processes—often without annoying background noise. That makes it easy to explain the value of the discovery to the public ...

The Higgs boson’s decay into muons happens in only about one in every 5000 Higgs decays. So, the team had to search for a ...

In truth, particle physics has always proceeded in two ways, of which new particles is one. The other is by making very precise measurements that test the predictions of theories and look for ...

Simulating data in particle physics is expensive and not perfectly accurate. To get around this, researchers are now ...

The smallest pieces of the universe are governed by a beautiful and mind-blowing set of rules: the “Standard Model.” The Standard Model explains the ...

Collisions at high-energy particle colliders are a traditionally fruitful source of exotic particle discoveries. Finding these rare particles requires solving difficult signal-versus-background ...

In a chilled lab where temperatures drop close to absolute zero, a speck of magnet hovers in place. This tiny magnet, ...

Another branch of physics—astrophysics—creates and tests theories about what’s happening across our vast universe. While particle physics and astrophysics appear to focus on opposite ends of a ...

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Astrophysicists have seen evidence for tiny variations in the background of neutrinos left over from the Big Bang. Roberto Trotta of Oxford University and Alessandro Melchiorri at the University of ...