Particle accelerator technology has just gotten bigger and bigger over the years, making physics more and more expensive. Luckily, researchers are looking into alternatives to the CERN’s multi-kilometer accelerators. Today we’re taking a look at the so-called micronozzle, a new concept in the world of particle accelerator tech — and a promising one.

In 2006 and 2014, the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) detected two mysterious bursts of particles rushing upwards into space from Earth’s surface. Physicists initially brushed this off with a plausible but boring explanation, but that reasoning has now been thrown out the window. So it’s back to the drawing board, and we might be looking at new physics. Let’s take a look at how this happened and what it means for physics.

When I started my career in physics, I didn’t plan on becoming particle physicists’ enemy number one, but somehow I have. Here’s how it all happened.

CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider. This project is likely to cost more than $40 billion and wouldn’t be operational until the 2070s. Let’s take a look at why a growing number of physicists are saying we’d be better off without it.

This is a comment on a recent video by Matt O'Dowd.

I find it extremely distressing that we are still discussing this even though it's abundantly clear that naturalness arguments have historically worked extremely badly. It's a pseudo-scientific method that physicists need to stop using.

In 2020, a group of MIT researchers detected an anomaly in the nuclei of ytterbium atoms. They said that the nuclei’s strange behavior might be indicative of a “dark force” caused by a currently-undiscovered mystery particle that might make up dark matter. In 2020, the anomaly only had a significance of 3 sigma. But now, another group has confirmed it at a whopping 23 sigma! What does that mean for physics? Let’s find out.

Magnets always have two poles. Meaning, if you break a magnet in half, both of those halves will also have two poles. But some physicists think that particles with just one magnetic pole might exist – these theoretical particles are called monopoles. However, up until now, theories have shown that the existence of monopoles would cause a paradox by breaking up indivisible particles. Now, a group of physicists have published a new paper explaining that paradox, and monopoles might be back on the menu. Let’s take a look.

According to the incoming director of CERN, Mark Thomson, the large hadron collider (LHC) can tell us whether or not the universe will fall apart into pure energy What is he even talking about? I have a brief summary.



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Up until last week, physicists believed that matter is made up of only two types of particles: those whose spin has full-integer values (bosons) and those whose spin comes has half-integer values (fermions). But in a new paper, a group of researchers turned the world of physics upside down by mathematically proving that a third type of particles – the “paraparticles” are possible.

Fermilab has spent almost $2 billion on its Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). Physicists have claimed that the experiment is worthwhile because learning more about neutrinos will tell us why we exist, why the universe hasn’t disappeared, and why the universe is full of something rather than nothing. None of that is true.

String theory is one of the leading theories of everything, but it’s been criticized for being impossible to prove wrong – if it can’t be falsified, there’s no way to test it against empirical evidence. Now, though, a group of scientists claim they’ve found a way to prove the theory wrong, making it more legitimate. I am not convinced.

Ten years ago, physicists discovered an anomaly that was dubbed the “ATOMKI anomaly”. The decays of certain atomic nuclei disagreed with our current understanding of physics. Particle physicists assigned the anomaly to a new particle, X17, often described as a fifth force. The anomaly was now tested by a follow-up experiment, but this is only the latest twist in a rather confusing story.

CERN is turning 70 this month. A good occasion to look at their plans for building a particle collider even bigger than the Large Hadron Colider, the "Future Circular Collider" (FCC). It's not going all that well, but at least we now have a budget estimate for the first phase.

One of the United States' most famous national labs, Fermilab in Chicago, has been in trouble for several years. Now a group of whistleblowers has written a report that details their misgivings. Ive had a look and picked out the most interesting bits for you.

A small experiment aboard the International Space Station, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, found a crazy new physics anomaly: They have now detected 10 nuclei of anti-matter helium -- way more than expected. What could explain that? Most of the explanations that physicists have come up so far say it might be a relic of dark matter.

Particle physics have conducted a test using data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to see if the particles in their collisions play by the rules of quantum physics - whether they have quantum entanglement. Why was this test conducted when previous tests already found that entanglement is real? Is it just nonsense or is it not nonsense? Let’s have a look.

Physicists will soon begin an experiment at the South Pole to test if space has quantum fluctuations. Their new approach looks for decoherence in neutrinos oscillations that are sensitive to what has been dubbed "quantum foam" that could even contain tiny black holes. If successful, this experiment could uncover something that will combine Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum physics? Let’s have a look.

New articles have been popping up about CERN’s new experiment looking for so-called “ghost particles.” What are ghost particles? Is CERN haunted? What is this new experiment? Let’s have a look.

Three years ago, there was a frenzy over an experiment at Fermilab that confirmed anomaly of the muon - a fundamental particle in the standard model. Since then, physicists have debated whether the theory needs to be revised or whether there is something wrong with the calculation. A new paper now says it's neither.

String theory was a beautiful idea, the best contender for a theory of everything that we have seen so far. Thousands of physicists spend decades trying to work it out. But it didn’t quite go according to plan. String theory became extremely controversial during what's been dubbed the “String Wars” about 20 years ago. Then it kind of disappeared. What happened? What were the string wars? And what are string theorists doing now? That’s what we’ll talk about today.


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