Elementary particles

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson. But what exactly is this particle, and why is it so important? What has it taught us in the last decade – and more importantly, what could it teach us in the next decade?

The movements of the Sun, Moon and stars have long been used to keep track of time, and now engineers from the University of Tokyo have proposed a new way to use the cosmos to precisely track time, using showers of particles from cosmic rays.

A collaboration of physicists has made the most precise measurement of the mass of the W boson. The new measurement of this key particle differs drastically from the Standard Model's predictions– and it may unravel physics as we know it.

Last year, physicists reported that an experimental dark matter detector picked up a strange signal. A new Cambridge study suggests it could be the first direct detection of dark energy, the mysterious force accelerating the expansion of the universe.

Physicists at CERN have discovered an exotic new particle that’s quite charming. Known as Tcc+, the particle belongs to a rare class called tetraquarks, and its unusual composition makes it the longest-lived exotic hadron found so far.

There’s invisible, undetectable stuff all around us, and we call it dark matter. There’s plenty of evidence that this stuff is very real, but what exactly is dark matter? How do we know it’s there? And how are scientists looking for it?

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider probes the fringes of known physics, and now the facility has found particles not behaving as predicted. While it’s early days, the discovery hints at the existence of new particles or forces beyond the Standard Model.

In January scientists reported the detection of very low-frequency gravitational waves. Now astrophysicists have investigated two possible sources – the universe cooling down after the Big Bang, and a field of particles that could be dark matter.

Dark matter should outnumber regular matter five to one, yet it remains frustratingly elusive. But there might be ways to spot it, and now astronomers have scanned neutron stars for telltale signals of a proposed dark matter particle called an axion.

An extensive search for a hypothetical particle has turned up empty. The sterile neutrino is a proposed subatomic particle that could even be a candidate for the mysterious dark matter, but two new experiments have all but ruled it out.

An experiment designed to hunt for ever elusive dark matter has returned some strange and exciting signals. Out of the three possible explanations, one is unwanted interference – while the other two would herald new physics.

There are billions of tiny particles called neutrinos streaming through your body right now. But where did they come from? Researchers have now traced back some ultra-high energy neutrinos to their points of origin – radio flares from raging quasars.