Ten things you might not know about antimatter
Antimatter is the stuff of science fiction. In the book and film Angels and Demons, Professor Langdon tries to save Vatican City from an antimatter bomb.Star Trek’s starship Enterprise uses matter-antimatter annihilation propulsion for faster-than-light travel.. But antimatter is also the stuff of reality. Antimatter particles are almost identical to their matter counterparts except that ...
The deconstructed Standard Model equation - symmetry magazine
The deconstructed Standard Model equation. 07/28/16. By Rashmi Shivni. The Standard Model is far more than elementary particles arranged in a table. The Standard Model of particle physics is often visualized as a table, similar to the periodic table of elements, and used to describe particle properties, such as mass, charge and spin.
What is a photon? - symmetry magazine
What physicists refer to as photons, other people might just call light. As quanta of light, photons are the smallest possible packets of electromagnetic energy. If you are reading this article on a screen or a page, streams of photons are carrying the images of the words to your eyes. In science, photons are used for more than just illumination.
Do protons decay? - symmetry magazine
Sep 22, 2015 · Protons—whether inside atoms or drifting free in space—appear to be remarkably stable. We’ve never seen one decay. However, nothing essential in physics forbids a proton from decaying. In fact, a stable proton would be exceptional in the world of particle physics, and several theories demand that protons decay.
Eight things you might not know about light - symmetry magazine
Here are eight enlightening facts about photons: 1. Photons can produce shock waves in water or air, similar to sonic booms. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. However, light slows down in air, water, glass and other materials as photons interact with atoms, which has some interesting consequences.
The particle physics of you - symmetry magazine
About 99 percent of your body is made up of atoms of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. You also contain much smaller amounts of the other elements that are essential for life. While most of the cells in your body regenerate every seven to 15 years, many of the particles that make up those cells have actually existed for millions of millennia.
The Planck scale - symmetry magazine
The Planck scale. 05/19/16. By Rashmi Shivni. The Planck scale sets the universe’s minimum limit, beyond which the laws of physics break. In the late 1890s, physicist Max Planck proposed a set of units to simplify the expression of physics laws. Using just five constants in nature (including the speed of light and the gravitational constant ...
Where does mass come from? - symmetry magazine
The Higgs field gives mass to elementary particles, but most of our mass comes from somewhere else. The story of particle mass starts right after the Big Bang. During the very first moments of the universe, almost all particles were massless, traveling at the speed of light in a very hot “primordial soup.”. At some point during this period ...
What is a “particle”? - symmetry magazine
Everyone has heard of Einstein’s famed E=mc 2. Part of what that means is that making a particle requires energy proportional to its mass. Neutrinos, which are very low mass, are easy to make; electrons have a higher threshold, while heavy Higgs bosons need a huge amount of energy. Photons are easiest of all to make, because they don't have ...
The status of supersymmetry - symmetry magazine
Jan 12, 2021 · Supersymmetry more than doubles the number of particles in the Standard Model. The particles we currently know to exist can be divided into two categories: fermions and bosons. In supersymmetric theories, each particle has an as-yet undiscovered “superpartner” with many similar properties. Fermions are paired with bosons and vice-versa.