The internal structure of a proton, with quarks, gluons, and quark spin shown. The nuclear force acts like a spring, with negligible force when unstretched but large, attractive forces when stretched ...

Scientists saw a quark plowing through primordial plasma for the first time, offering a rare look at the first moments after ...

In its first moments, the infant universe was a trillion-degree-hot soup of quarks and gluons. These elementary particles zinged around at light speed, creating a "quark-gluon plasma" that lasted for ...

An atom is about 10^-10 m in size. The next smallest thing in nature is the nucleus, which is about 100,000 times smaller, i.e., 10^-15 m in size — a femtometer, or “fermi.” A nucleus is composed of ...

One of the great theoretical challenges facing physicists is understanding how the tiniest elementary particles give rise to most of the mass in the visible universe. A physicist from MIT will talk ...

In the first fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe was a hot, dense ocean of perfectly free-flowing particles called a quark-gluon plasma. It didn't last long—all the gluons and ...

For a mere moment after the Big Bang, no neutrons or protons are thought to have existed. These neutral and positively charged particles, respectively, make up the center of all atoms today. But ...

Comparing the number of direct photons emitted when proton spins point in opposite directions (top) with the number emitted when protons collide head-to-tail (bottom) revealed that gluon spins align ...

Researchers at Brookhaven National Laboratory's RHIC particle accelerator have determined that an exotic form of matter produced in their collisions is the most rapidly spinning material ever detected ...

All the matter we know of in the Universe is made up of Standard Model particles. Photons and neutrinos zip through the Universe all the time, far outnumbering all the other particles. Normal, ...