For decades, physicists have relied on the principle of symmetry to simplify and understand the complex behaviors of subatomic particles. Symmetry in physics basically means that some rules of nature ...

Nature is the ultimate puzzle player, as scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) found out last week. In the late 1950s, particle physics was in crisis. Being the branch of ...

Probing ever deeper into the inner world of the atom, nuclear physicists have uncovered an increasingly baffling collection of tiny particles. Besides the familiar neutrons, electrons and protons, ...

Nowadays physicists are confident in their knowledge of nature’s ultimate bits of matter. A handful of building blocks can be easily summarized in a neat little chart. But merely half a century ago, ...

Quarks are found in protons and are bound together by forces which cause all other known forces of nature to fade. To understand the effects of these strong forces between the quarks is one of the ...

As they probe deeper into the heart of the atom, discovering ever smaller and more mysterious particles and particles within particles, scientists have succeeded in bringing the once stable world of ...

The strong nuclear force is the force that causes quarks to bind together to form composite particles, such as the proton. It is explained within the standard model of particle physics by a theory ...

The universe is a complex and intricate place. We can move easily through air and yet not through a wall. The sun transmutes one element to another, bathing our planet in warmth and light. Radio waves ...

So there are these things called quarks. (I know, I wish they had a better name, but I'm not in charge of naming things in physics.) Quarks are little teensy tiny particles (we'll get to exactly how ...

A recent experiment at Jefferson Lab probed the mirror symmetry of quarks, determining that one of their intrinsic properties is non-zero—as predicted by the Standard Model. From matching wings on ...