Featured
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Nature Podcast |
How gliding marsupials got their ‘wings’
Researchers find the genetic mutations that allow some marsupials to soar, and an ultra-accurate clock is put through its paces on the high seas.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Elizabeth Gibney
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Research Highlight |
Detectors deep in South Pole ice pin down elusive tau neutrino
Antarctic observatory gathers the first clear evidence of mysterious subatomic particles from space.
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Spotlight |
CERN’s impact goes way beyond tiny particles
A global effort to uncover the nature of the Universe has had resounding effects on scientists and society.
- Nikki Forrester
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Nature Careers Podcast |
How a young physicist’s job move helped Argentina join the ATLAS collaboration
A stint at CERN exposed María Teresa Dova to longstanding collaborators and mentors, culminating in a successful bid to join a landmark project.
- Julie Gould
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Obituary |
Peter Higgs obituary: physicist who predicted boson that explains why particles have mass
Theoretical physicist saw his eponymous particle discovered after 48 years.
- Christine Sutton
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Book Review |
Cosmologist Claudia de Rham on falling for gravity
The aspiring astronaut turned theoretical physicist talks travelling, the accelerating expansion of the Universe, thinking beyond three dimensions and detecting gravitational waves.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Highlight |
A supercollider glimpses a gathering of three particles never seen together before
Data from billions of proton collisions reveal that subatomic particles called W+ and W− bosons keep company with a photon.
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News |
China’s giant underground neutrino lab prepares to probe cosmic mysteries
Due to come online this year, the JUNO facility will help to determine which type of neutrino has the highest mass — one of the biggest mysteries in physics.
- Gemma Conroy
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News |
How heavy is a neutrino? Race to weigh mysterious particle heats up
Physicists discuss experiments that could improve laboratory measurements of the super-light particle’s mass.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
CERN’s supercollider plan: $17-billion ‘Higgs factory’ would dwarf LHC
A feasibility study on the Future Circular Collider identifies where and how the machine could be built — but its construction is far from a done deal.
- Elizabeth Gibney
- & Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
Leading US particle-physics lab faces uncertain future
Several organizations are vying for the contract to manage Fermilab, after it received failing grades from the US Department of Energy.
- Dan Garisto
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News |
China’s new dark-matter lab is biggest and deepest yet
The laboratory is scaling up its equipment to hunt for dark matter.
- Gemma Conroy
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Editorial |
US particle physicists want to build a muon collider — Europe should pitch in
A feasibility study for a muon smasher in the United States could be an affordable way to maintain particle physics unity.
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Essay |
How a forgotten physicist’s discovery broke the symmetry of the Universe
When Rosemary Brown identified a strange particle decay 75 years ago, it set events in motion that would rewrite the laws of physics.
- Suzie Sheehy
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Research Highlight |
The Higgs boson is caught in a singular transformation
Detectors at the Large Hadron Collider spot the famed particle decaying into a photon and a ‘Z boson’.
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News & Views |
Neutrino secrets could be revealed by Earth’s atmosphere
Scientists typically look at the skies or take to the laboratory to probe the neutrino’s properties. But neutrinos produced in Earth’s atmosphere could reveal this long-sought information — and the experiments are already well under way.
- Josh Spitz
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News |
Big Bang observatory tops wish list for big US physics projects
Report also supports projects of unprecedented scale to study dark matter, neutrinos and the Higgs boson.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Nature Podcast |
Why COP28 probably won’t keep the 1.5 degree dream alive
We discuss the challenges of the upcoming climate-change conference, and a way to make stable plasma using hairy blocks.
- Nick Petrić Howe
- & Shamini Bundell
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News |
The most powerful cosmic ray since the Oh-My-God particle puzzles scientists
Scientists spot a particle of intense energy, but explaining where it came from might require some new physics.
- Gemma Conroy
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Book Review |
The ‘brazen’ science that paved the way for the Higgs boson (and a lot more)
Fundamental physics has progressed in leaps and bounds in the past century — driven by strong characters and often a complete disregard for health and safety, as a spirited history shows.
- Tara Shears
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Research Briefing |
Testing the limits of the standard model of particle physics with a heavy, highly charged ion
Quantum electrodynamics, the archetypical theory of electromagnetic interactions, describes the behaviour of charged particles and photons using quantum field theory. Measuring the g factor of a bound electron in a hydrogen-like tin ion (118Sn49+) provides one of the most stringent tests so far of quantum electrodynamics in strong electric fields.
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News & Views |
Free-falling antihydrogen reveals the effect of gravity on antimatter
A test performed on antihydrogen atoms has shown that gravity acts on matter and antimatter in a similar way. The experimental feat is the latest in efforts to probe the crossover between theories of relativity and particle physics.
- Anna Soter
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News |
Antimatter falls down, not up: CERN experiment confirms theory
Observing this simple phenomenon had eluded physicists for decades.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article
| Open Access
Observation of the effect of gravity on the motion of antimatter
Magnetically confined neutral antihydrogen atoms released in a gravity field were found to fall towards Earth like ordinary matter, in accordance with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
- E. K. Anderson
- , C. J. Baker
- & J. S. Wurtele
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News |
World’s most powerful X-ray laser will ‘film’ chemical reactions in unprecedented detail
Upgraded laser in California will produce one million X-ray pulses per second to study ultrafast processes at the atomic level.
- Katherine Bourzac
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News |
How would room-temperature superconductors change science?
The prized materials could be transformative for research — but only if they have other essential qualities.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News |
Dreams of new physics fade with latest muon magnetism result
Precision test of particle’s magnetism confirms earlier shocking findings — but theory might not need a rethink after all.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News Feature |
The most unusual portrait of the Milky Way yet: mapping the Galaxy with neutrinos
A vast telescope buried beneath Antarctica has captured high-energy neutrinos from the Galactic Centre, ushering in a new era for observing the Universe.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Highlight |
Nothing strange about this pentaquark’s ‘strangeness’
The Large Hadron Collider yields a five-quark particle that includes a ‘strange’ quark, as predicted by theory.
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News & Views |
The particle-physics breakthrough that paved the way for the Higgs boson
The discovery of ‘weak neutral currents’ at Europe’s particle-physics research centre CERN 50 years ago was a decisive step towards establishing the standard model of particle physics — a journey that continues to this day.
- Pippa Wells
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News |
Gravitational-wave detector LIGO is back — and can now spot more colliding black holes than ever
The twin gravitational-wave detectors have started a new observation run after a major upgrade.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article |
Limits on the luminance of dark matter from xenon recoil data
A direct search for effective electromagnetic interactions between dark matter and xenon nuclei that produce a recoil of the latter is carried out and the first constraint on charge radius of dark matter is derived.
- Xuyang Ning
- , Abdusalam Abdukerim
- & Yubo Zhou
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Article |
Determining the gluonic gravitational form factors of the proton
The gluonic gravitational form factor of the proton was determined using various models, and these analyses showed that the mass radius of the proton was smaller than the electric charge radius.
- B. Duran
- , Z.-E. Meziani
- & Z. Zhao
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News & Views |
A glimpse at the inner structure of the proton
The size of the space taken up by a proton’s mass has been measured, and it’s much smaller than previously thought. The result is a key step towards understanding the complex structure of this fundamental building block.
- Anna M. Stasto
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News |
LHC physicists resolve stalemate over Russian authors
Agreement on how to list scientists at Russian organizations on research papers will help to clear journals’ backlog.
- Richard Van Noorden
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Article
| Open Access
Measurement of the axial vector form factor from antineutrino–proton scattering
The authors measure the nucleon axial vector form factor, which encodes information on the distribution of the nucleon weak charge, through antineutrino–proton scattering.
- T. Cai
- , M. L. Moore
- & L. Zazueta
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Article |
Pattern of global spin alignment of ϕ and K*0 mesons in heavy-ion collisions
At the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, observations of two meson species produced by heavy-ion collisions, ϕ and K*0, show surprising patterns of global spin alignment, being unexpectedly large and consistent with zero, respectively.
- M. S. Abdallah
- , B. E. Aboona
- & M. Zyzak
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News & Views |
Nuclear reaction rules out sterile-neutrino hypothesis
An anomalous measurement from a nuclear reactor triggered a three-year campaign to find an elusive particle called the sterile neutrino. The search shows definitively that sterile neutrinos don’t exist — but the anomaly persists.
- Jun Cao
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Article |
STEREO neutrino spectrum of 235U fission rejects sterile neutrino hypothesis
Accurate measurements of the antineutrino energy spectrum of 235U fission by the STEREO detector reject the sterile neutrino hypothesis and point to biases in the nuclear data to explain the discrepancies with the prediction.
- H. Almazán
- , L. Bernard
- & M. Vialat
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Nature Podcast |
The Nature Podcast’s highlights of 2022
The team select some of their favourite stories from the past 12 months.
- Benjamin Thompson
- , Shamini Bundell
- & Noah Baker
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News |
Hint of crack in standard model vanishes in LHC data
Discrepancy in measurement of a type of particle decay had raised hopes of new physics.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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News Round-Up |
Higgs boson carbon emissions and a COVID nasal spray
The latest science news, in brief.
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Article |
Quantum field simulator for dynamics in curved spacetime
The behaviour of quantum fields in curved spacetime is simulated using a two-dimensional trapped quantum gas of potassium atoms with a configurable trap and adjustable interaction strength.
- Celia Viermann
- , Marius Sparn
- & Markus K. Oberthaler
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News |
What’s the carbon footprint of a Higgs boson? It varies — a lot
Physicists say environmental concerns need to be considered when choosing the world’s next collider.
- Elizabeth Gibney
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News |
Energy crisis squeezes science at CERN and other major facilities
LHC to end 2022 data-taking season two weeks early to save on electricity, among other measures.
- Brian Owens
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News |
Defence research, charm quark — the week in infographics
Nature highlights three key graphics from the week in science and research.
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Article
| Open Access
Evidence for intrinsic charm quarks in the proton
Through machine learning analysis of a large set of collider data, a study disentangles intrinsic from radiatively generated charm, and finds evidence for an intrinsic charm quark within the proton wavefunction.
- Richard D. Ball
- , Alessandro Candido
- & Juan Rojo
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News & Views |
Evidence at last that the proton has intrinsic charm
An analysis of the distribution of the elementary particles that make up the proton provides evidence that it contains a type of quark known as an intrinsic charm quark — verifying a proposal made four decades ago.
- Ramona Vogt
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Nature Podcast |
Do protons have intrinsic charm? New evidence suggests yes
A machine learning approach examines decades of data in the hunt for the proton’s charm, and the latest from the Nature Briefing.
- Benjamin Thompson
- & Nick Petrić Howe
World’s brightest X-rays: China first in Asia to build next-generation synchrotron