Professor of Theoretical Physics Risto Paatelainen from the University of Turku in Finland has spent nearly ten years working on a single unanswered question in particle physics. He aims to find out ...

New theoretical analysis places the likelihood of massive neutron stars hiding cores of deconfined quark matter between 80 and 90 percent. The result was reached through massive supercomputer runs ...

Atoms are made of three things: protons, neutrons, and electrons. Electrons are a type of fundamental particle, but protons and neutrons are composite particles made of up and down quarks. Protons ...

Scientists are dreaming up ways to probe the nature of the Universe’s smallest bits—quarks—by observing ultra-dense neutron stars slamming into each other. Particle colliders in Switzerland and on ...

Neutron stars are so named because in the simplest of models they are made of neutrons. They form when the core of a large star collapses, and the weight of gravity causes atoms to collapse. Electrons ...

Dark star crashes: the computer simulation of two merging neutron stars (left) blended with an image of heavy-ion collisions at CERN to highlight the connection of astrophysics with nuclear physics.

Quark matter may join solid, liquids, gases, and plasmas as a newly-understood state of matter. Far from being exotic, a new study suggests that quark matter could make up a large percentage of the ...

Quark core: artist’s impression of the interior of a massive neutron star showing a quark-matter core in red. (Courtesy: Jyrki Hokkanen/CSC) It is very likely that ultra-dense deconfined quark matter ...

Scientists have presented findings from three Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments that study lead ion collisions at the annual Quark Matter conference, held this year in Annecy, France. The ...

Artist’s impression of the different layers inside a massive neutron star, with the red circle representing a sizable quark-matter core. New theoretical analysis places the likelihood of massive ...