Experimental physics

Janet Conrad has a plan to catch the sterile neutrino — an elusive particle, possibly glimpsed by a number of experiments, that would upend what we know about the subatomic world.

How do physicists reconstruct what really happened in a particle collision? Through calculations that are so challenging that, in some cases, they simply can’t be done. Yet.

An unexpected connection has emerged between the results of physics experiments and an important, seemingly unrelated set of numbers in pure mathematics.

So-called “analogue experiments” are becoming increasingly common in physics, but do they teach or mislead?

Can a fluid analogue of a black hole point physicists toward the theory of quantum gravity, or is it a red herring?

A discrepancy in the measured size of the “deuteron” increases the chance that something is amiss in our understanding of atoms.

Physicists are confronting their “nightmare scenario.” What does the absence of new particles suggest about how nature works?

A hint that neutrinos behave differently than antineutrinos suggests an answer to one the biggest questions in physics.

Suchitra Sebastian’s searches for quantum anomalies have led to the potential discovery of a new building block of matter.