The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has begun its first-ever collisions of oxygen ions, in the latest attempt to understand the ...

What happens when the smallest building blocks of matter refuse to play by the rules of traditional physics? For decades, ...

John Peoples was asked in the mid-1990s about the value of doing pure scientific research — that which has no predetermined benefit. “Knowledge is a form of wealth,” he replied. “It is an ...

While gluons are responsible for generating most of the visible mass in the universe, their role inside nuclei remains poorly ...

Understanding the structure of hadrons, such as protons and neutrons, is currently one of the most important goals for researchers studying nuclear ...

Quirks & Quarks features our ever-popular listener question show, where we find experts to answer your questions. But here are ten mysteries that science has yet to answer.

Valence quarks get lots of attention. But they’re about 1% of what’s inside a proton. Protons also contain another kind of fundamental particle that acts like glue between quarks.

Scientists have now mapped the forces acting inside a proton, showing in unprecedented detail how quarks—the tiny particles within—respond when hit by high-energy photons.

For example, baryons, such as protons and neutrons, are combinations of three quarks bound tightly together by strong force -carrying gluons.

If quarks and gluons are entangled with protons, this technique says that should be revealed by the disorder, or " entropy, " seen in the sprays of daughter particles.

Atomic nuclei, composed of protons and neutrons, hide quarks and gluons at their core. These latter particles, still challenging to study, have long eluded scientists. In the mid-20th century, ...