Physicists detail how “Ice VII” forms for the first time and what this means for life elsewhere in the galaxy.

An international team of researchers has successfully produced a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in space for the first time. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes creating a small experimental device that was carried on a rocket into space and the experiments that were conducted during its freefall.

With the help of two extremely bright quasars located more than 7 billion light-years away, researchers recently bolstered the case for quantum entanglement — a phenomenon Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance" — by eliminating one classical alternative: The freedom-of-choice loophole.

An enormous future particle detector is now within closer reach. The first data from a prototype experiment hint that scientists may have what it takes to build the planned neutrino detector. Known as the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE, the experiment will use 70,000 metric tons of liquefied argon to study the secrets of these neutrinos — bizarre, nearly massless particles that may help reveal why matter is common in the universe but antimatter is rare. DUNE will eventually detect the tracks of charged particles, including electrons and their heavier cousins, muons, that are produced when neutrinos interact.

In research that may help bridge the divide between the nano and the macro, Brown University chemists have used pyramid-shaped nanoparticles to create what might be the most complex macroscale superstructure ever assembled.

There's something out there that physicists have never seen before, and it's coming up from the bottom of the Earth. Scientists think it's a brand-new particle.

The Large Hadron Collider is at it again, showing us new wonders in the world of particle physics. Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb) collaboration have observed two new particles that have never been seen before - and seen

There's something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it. Physicists don't know what it is exactly. But they do know it's some sort of cosmic ray — a high-energy particle that's blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about — the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics — shouldn't be able to do that.

Scientists have created a long-sought particle in the lab by hitting a crystal lattice with photons.

The Standard Model is a kind of periodic table of the elements for particle physics. But instead of listing the chemical elements, it lists the fundamental particles that make up the atoms that make up the chemical elements, along with any other particles that cannot be broken down into any smaller pieces.

On 3 June this year, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN began delivering particle collisions at an energy 63% higher than previously acheived. This week in Vienna, first physics results were presented. Here are some highlights.

The NOvA detector has seen its first neutrino oscillations.

Researchers pushing the Large Hadron Collider to its limits say engineering difficulties will cut short the amount of physics data gathered this year.

Physicists search for deviations from normal gravity

Accelerating positrons with plasma is a step toward smaller, cheaper particle colliders.

Subatomic particles have been found that appear to defy the Standard Model of particle physics. The team working at Cern's Large Hadron Collider have found evidence of leptons decaying at different rates, which could possibly point to some undiscovered forces. Publishing their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters, the team from the University of Maryland had been searching for conditions and behaviours that do not fit with the Standard Model.

First results from collisions of three-particle ions with gold nuclei reveal clear-cut evidence of primordial soup's signature particle flow.

The neutrino and its antimatter cousin, the antineutrino, are the tiniest subatomic particles known to science. These particles are byproducts of nuclear reactions within stars (including our sun), supernovae, black holes and human-made nuclear reactors. They also result from radioactive decay processes deep within the Earth, where radioactive heat and the heat left over from the planet's formation fuels plate tectonics, volcanoes and Earth's magnetic field.

A leftover glow unlike any other — of neutrinos — has finally been seen.

The LHC and the Belle experiment have found particle decay patterns that violate the Standard Model of particle physics

As new data continue to be collected at CERN, another look at some of the straws in the wind, otherwise known as “hints of new physics”, that might develop into exciting breakthroughs

An emerging theory takes principles from quantum physics and applies them to psychology.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have “teleported” or transferred quantum information carried in light particles over 100 kilometers (km) of optical fiber, four times farther than the previous record.

It’s been more than three years since we’ve found the Higgs boson. So how does it give particles mass?

The most powerful accelerator in the world found the Higgs, but might not find anything else. What should come next?

Machines that ‘surf’ particles on electric fields could reach high energies at a lower price.

A team of scientists have made what may turn out to be the most important discovery in history – how the universe came into being from nothing. The colossal question has troubled religions, philosophers and scientists since the dawn of time but now a Canadian team believe they have solved the riddle. And the findings are so conclusive they even challenge the need for religion, or at least an omnipotent creator – the basis of all world religions.

A new study offers some reassurance. By Michael Byrne.

His Holiness on emptiness and entanglement.

Other universes might be bumping into ours, and these bumps are leaving their mark.

The kind of research being conducted at CERN is a reminder of what we can accomplish, together, even amid the darkest of times, says physicist Marcelo Gleiser.

In the beginning, there was a question mark. All else followed. The end. We've all heard of the Big Bang theory (I'm talking about the cosmological model, not the TV show), but it's important to understand what that theory is and what it's not. Let me take this opportunity to be precisely, abundantly, emphatically, ridiculously, fantastically clear: The Big Bang theory is not a theory of the creation of the universe. Full stop. Done. Call it. Burn that sentence into your brain. Say it before y

Classically, light can be thought of in two ways: either as a particle or a wave. But what is it really? Well, the ‘observer effect’ makes that question kind of difficult to answer. So before we get too far into it, what is the observer effect?

Researchers have developed a system that uses an electric shockwave to extract salt and other impurities out of salty or contaminated water, and say it could be scaled up for use in desalination or water purification plants, or be used to clean the vast amounts of dirty water produced by fracking. Known as 'shock electrodialysis', the technique applies an electrically driven shockwave to a constant stream of flowing water. The current interacts with the charged salt particles...

Scientists don’t yet know what dark matter is made of, but they are full of ideas. By Laura Dattaro.