particle physics

What are the mysteries that still remain in particle physics?

Latest observations hint towards new particles.

It's amazing to think that our world is based on a handful of fundamental particles and forces. Find out how it all fits together.

There are many theories in particle physics that cannot be tested in experiments. Does this make it unscientific? This debate, featuring one of our favourite theoretical physicists, David Tong, explores the question.

We might have found the Higgs boson, but the search for new physics at the LHC isn't over yet.

By the 1970s physicists had successfully tamed three of the fundamental forces using a sophisticated construct called quantum field theory. The trouble was that the framework seemed to fall apart when you looked at very high or very low energy scales. So how could these be thought of as valid theories? It's a question physicists are still grappling with today.

The early 1950s were an experimental gold mine for physicists, with new particles produced in accelerators almost every week. Yet the strong nuclear force that acted between them defied theoretical description, sending physicists on a long and arduous journey that culminated in several Nobel prizes and the exotic concept of "asymptotic freedom".

Research into the bizarre world of neutrinos helps to piece together the creation story of the Universe.

In 2004 three physicists decided to dabble in a field they knew little about. Within weeks they had developed a new technique that transforms weeks' worth of computer calculations into something that could be done on a single page in an hour. It's used in particle accelerators such as the LHC at CERN.

The 2013 Nobel prize in physics goes to Peter Higgs and François Englert for proposing the mechanism that gives things mass.