Experimental physics

Having solved a central mystery about the “twirliness” of tornadoes and other types of vortices, William Irvine has set his sights on turbulence, the white whale of classical physics.

Push or crush a new class of materials, and they’ll undergo record-breaking temperature changes.

Researchers say there are three possible explanations for the anomalous data. One is mundane. Two would revolutionize physics.

Anyons don’t fit into either of the two known particle kingdoms. To find them, physicists had to erase the third dimension.

Snow crystals come in two main types. The “pope” of snowflake physics has a new theory that explains why.

Physicists have long searched for hypothesized dark matter particles called WIMPs. Now, focus may be shifting to the axion — an ultra-lightweight particle whose existence would solve two mysteries at once.

A new measurement appears to have eliminated an anomaly that had captivated physicists for nearly a decade.

While studying materials made from DNA-coated nanoparticles, researchers found a new form of this matter: lattices in which smaller particles roam like electrons in metallic bonds.

Carlo Rubbia, leader of the bold collider experiment that in 1983 discovered the W and Z bosons, thinks particle physicists should now smash muons together in an innovative “Higgs factory.”