Scientists used high-energy heavy ion collisions to reveal subtle details about the shapes of atomic nuclei. They demonstrated the new way to use high-energy particle smashups at the Relativistic ...

To unlock the secrets of dark matter, scientists could turn to supermassive black holes and their ability to act as natural superpowered particle colliders. That's according to new research that found ...

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN have successfully transmuted lead into gold — not by alchemy, but by smashing heavy ions together at nearly the speed of light. The process, ...

At the heart of every atomic nucleus, the strong interaction quietly dictates the structure of matter, yet for decades one of its simplest products refused to fit the script. The way fragile “light ...

At the world’s most powerful colliders, physicists are finally catching sight of particles that almost never leave a trace, a “ghost” signal that has haunted theory for decades. The detection of these ...

The long and complicated journey to detect the Higgs boson, which started with one small step about 25 years ago, might finally have reached its goal. This was reported by LHC particle accelerator ...

Black holes are powerful engines of pure gravity, capable of pulling on objects so intensely that they can't possibly escape. When those objects near the event horizon, they're accelerated to ...

Dark matter is notoriously antisocial, refusing to interact with light and "normal" matter, making it effectively invisible. But what scientists aren't sure about is if dark matter interacts with ...

A snapshot of a computer simulation showing how energy density changes over time in the collision of a lead ion with a photon emitted by another lead ion. The world’s largest and most powerful ...

We're getting closer to full power: For the first time in two years, after significant upgrades and repairs, the Large Hadron Collider is now delivering proton-to-proton collisions for four of CERN's ...

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Particle accelerators (often referred to as “atom smashers”) use strong electric fields to push streams of subatomic particles—usually protons or electrons—to tremendous speeds. Accelerators by the ...