For decades scientists have tried to find a way to measure the mass of the lightest matter particle known to exist. Three new approaches now have a chance to succeed. In 1980, Hamish Robertson was a ...

The fundamental particle of light is both ordinary and full of surprises. What physicists refer to as photons, other people might just call light. As quanta of light, photons are the smallest possible ...

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will be named for an influential astronomer who left the field better than she found it. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a flagship astronomy and astrophysics ...

A possible explanation for the lightness of neutrinos could help answer some big questions about the universe. Mass is a fundamental property of matter, but there’s still a lot about it we don’t ...

Neutrinos don’t seem to get their mass in the same way as other particles in the Standard Model. In 1998, researchers made a discovery that challenged their understanding of particle physics and ...

The 2013 documentary Particle Fever follows physicists from the start-up of the LHC through the discovery of the Higgs boson. Where are those physicists now? Physicist Monica Dunford remembers when ...

Learn about the Standard Model of particle physics and how physicists use it to predict the (subatomic) future. In ancient times, Greeks interested in forecasting the future would voyage on the ...

Our best model of particle physics explains only about 5 percent of the universe. The Standard Model is a thing of beauty. It is the most rigorous theory of particle physics, incredibly precise and ...

In the 1900s, Albert Einstein unified the concepts of space and time, giving us a useful new way to picture the universe. At the start of the 20th century, physicists had a problem: The speed of light ...

As we step into the quantum age, here are four things to know about quantum networks. Four years, four months, and twelve days ago, a photon—a particle of light—left Proxima Centauri, the closest star ...

Over time, particle physics and astrophysics and computing have built upon one another’s successes. That coevolution continues today. In the mid-twentieth century, particle physicists were peering ...

For physicists trying to harness the power of electricity, no tool was more important than the vacuum tube. This lightbulb-like device controlled the flow of electricity and could amplify signals. In ...