Physics

The world’s most powerful X-ray laser is ready for operation after a massive overhaul. The upgraded LCLS-II uses temperatures colder than deep space to accelerate electrons to near light-speed and fire off a million X-ray bursts per second.

Although it should be extremely common in the universe, dark matter has proven tricky to detect. Now researchers have proposed an intriguing new method to spot it – looking for shock waves as dark matter “asteroids” collide with stars.

The universe is governed by two sets of seemingly incompatible laws of physics – classical and quantum physics. MIT physicists have now observed the moment atoms switch from one to the other, as they form intriguing “quantum tornadoes.”

Physicists at CERN have discovered that antimatter falls down. It sounds obvious, but scientists hadn’t yet been able to confirm that it responds to gravity in the same way as regular matter does. A new experiment provides the best answer so far.

CERN physicists have measured the life of the Higgs boson with greater accuracy than ever before. Since the legendary particle only lives for a tiny fraction a second, the scientists came up with a creative workaround to calculate the new figure.

How did the universe end up with exactly the amount of dark matter needed? A new model suggests dark matter particles in the early universe converted regular matter into dark matter exponentially, before being slowed by the expansion of the universe.

Astronomers have proposed a novel solution to one of the many mysteries of black holes – why do so many seem to be more massive than expected? A new model suggests that their growth may be “cosmologically coupled” to the expansion of the universe.

Normal matter has an “evil twin” that annihilates on contact, and despite decades of study antimatter remains very mysterious. So what actually is it? Where is it? Why is it important to understand? And why hasn’t it already destroyed the universe?

Physicists have measured the lifetime of a free neutron more precisely than ever before. This breakthrough "bathtub" experiment helps probe the fringes of the Standard Model of particle physics, and mysteries like dark matter and the early universe.

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three scientists for "groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems." One half went jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann, and the other to Giorgio Parisi.

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.

German physicists have recorded the coldest temperature ever – 38 trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. The experiment involved dropping quantum gas and switching a magnetic field on and off to bring its atoms to an almost complete standstill.