Astronomers and physicists are gaping at the discovery of two collapsed stars that could prove the existence of exotic free-floating quarks. Without getting too technical (or theoretical, as the case ...

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 ...

The top quark’s extreme mass makes it decay almost immediately after it is produced. “The top and antitop quarks just have ...

The Standard Model became a kind of periodic table for the subatomic world. At its simplest, it sorts the building blocks of the universe into three categories: quarks, leptons, and bosons. Quarks and ...

By Mackenzie Devereux The Standard Model, depicting the fundamental building blocks of the universe, including top quarks. Courtesy of Cush via Wikimedia Commons Sitong An, a physicist at Carnegie ...

What makes the journey fascinating is how each level of zoom reveals new rules. Biology gives way to chemistry, chemistry gives way to physics, and eventually physics reaches a quantum realm full of ...

Scientists have been studying the nucleus of the atom ever since Ernest Rutherford first discovered it in 1909. Twenty-five years later, scientists were already describing the nucleus as a ...