The established theory of particle physics is called the standard model, and has passed a vast number of experimental tests with flying colours. But one such test — the determination of the magnetic ...

In July 2012, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe triumphantly announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, the long-sought linchpin of the subatomic world. Interacting with Higgs ...

Maintenance of the software that’s used for the hardest physics calculations rests almost entirely with a retiree. The situation reveals the problematic incentive structure of academia. Recently, I ...

Physicists have found that an elementary particle called the W boson appears to be 0.1 percent too heavy—a tiny discrepancy that could foreshadow a huge shift in fundamental physics. The measurement, ...

A “muon shot” aims to study the basic forces of the cosmos. But meager federal budgets could limit its ambitions. By Dennis Overbye and Katrina Miller Friday, Dec. 8: This story was updated to include ...

Physicists have spent decades treating mass as something the universe simply hands to particles, a property encoded in equations rather than explained from first principles. A new proposal argues that ...