C. Zhang

In 2016, the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider recorded millions of proton-proton collisions. Among the debris of these collisions, neutral B mesons were born—particles that can spontaneously transform into their antiparticles and back.

When a massive star exhausts its thermonuclear fuel, its core collapses, and the outer layers are ejected into space at speeds of thousands of kilometers per second. This is how a supernova remnant is born — an expanding cloud of shock-compressed gas spanning light-years.

Cosmic rays are like a downpour pelting from all sides. But when the wind blows, the droplets change direction. In the same way, a solar storm, a cloud of magnetized gas from the Sun, bends the paths of these particles that normally rain down on Earth evenly. Cosmic rays are invisible messengers from distant galaxies.

A quantum computer isn't a monolith: it's more like an orchestra, where each qubit must play its part without drowning out the neighbors. In ion-based machines, two types of qubits are used: some store information, others process it. Previously, each type required its own laser, like separate batons for violins and trumpets.

In the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider, protons collide, and for a fleeting moment, particles that don't exist in ordinary matter are born. One of them is the neutral B meson. It lives for less than a billionth of a second and decays into two other particles: the narrow resonance J/ψ and the broader ρ(770).

In a plasma accelerator, particles are accelerated like surfers riding a wave created in the plasma. If the leading bunch and the trailing bunch are not aligned, an instability arises that shakes the trailing bunch. It's as if a surfer on a wave starts wobbling from side to side: their trajectory gets messed up, and they might fall off the wave.

The MicroBooNE detector is a large tank of liquid argon that catches particles flying through it. When a particle passes, it leaves a trail of charge and a flash of light. These trails combine into a three-dimensional picture of the event, as if the particle were drawing its path in a transparent cube.

For three years straight, every night, telescopes have stared at one point in the sky. There lies the galaxy Mrk 421, whose core shoots a jet of particles aimed almost exactly at Earth. Such objects are called blazars. A black hole at the galaxy's center spins matter into a disk, and some of it is ejected outward in two narrow beams.

In a giant particle accelerator, where protons traveling at nearly the speed of light smash into a neon target, charmed baryons are born — particles that live for less than a billionth of a second.

A dark matter detector is like a room where you're trying to hear a whisper while static electricity crackles nearby. This crackle is produced by radon atoms — a radioactive gas that seeps out from materials and air.

Proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider produce particles that live for less than a billionth of a second. One of them is the Bs meson, made of a strange quark and a bottom antiquark.

In the LHCb detector, like in a giant camera with billions of 'snapshots,' rare events are captured: how short-lived particles, B mesons, fall apart into lighter ones. One such decay, where a B meson turns into a kaon and a pair of muons, is particularly interesting. In it, as in a mirror, the difference between matter and antimatter may show up.

Neutrinos are tiny particles that zip through Earth, barely noticing it. In the MicroBooNE experiment, they are caught in a tank of liquid argon. When a neutrino strikes an argon nucleus, it produces an electron and protons, like splashes from a stone thrown into water.

Massive stars end their lives in a colossal explosion, which Fritz Zwicky called a supernova. The core crushes down into a black hole or a neutron star.

In proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider, physicists have for the first time caught a particle with two charm quarks. It is called Ξcc+ (pronounced "ksi-ksi-plus") and resembles a bead with not one but two heavy nuclei.

Every second, billions of decays happen inside our bodies, and nobody notices. But physicists do: they smash particles in accelerators and watch what fragments they fly into. Hidden in those fragments is the answer to why we exist at all. Right after the Universe was born, there were equal amounts of particles and antiparticles, but today all we see around us is particles.

Imagine a balance scale with identical weights, yet one pan always tips lower. In the world of elementary particles, this imbalance is called CP violation: particles and their mirror twins (antiparticles) behave slightly differently.

In the LHCb detector, where protons collide, one unusual track was found among billions of decays. The particle, named $$D_{s1}$$(2933)^+, appears for a moment and immediately decays into other particles. Its lifetime is so short that it cannot be observed directly — only through its decay products can its existence be reconstructed.

Every second, invisible projectiles from the depths of space pierce through us. These are cosmic rays — atomic nuclei accelerated to speeds nearly indistinguishable from the speed of light. Their energy is hundreds of millions of times greater than what our most powerful accelerators can achieve. Where does this monstrous force come from?

A coin landing on its edge is about as rare as a heavy B meson decaying into a light pion and an electron-positron pair. Over a decade of collider operation, only a handful of such events have accumulated, but physicists have finally managed to spot them. The decay probability is about 2.4×10⁻⁸.

A chamber the size of a small truck is filled with liquid argon at minus 186 degrees Celsius. When a particle flies in, it knocks electrons off argon atoms, and those electrons drift toward the walls, tracing a three-dimensional picture of the event.

In a giant ring of magnets outside Chicago, muons whirled like figure skaters on an ice rink. But instead of music, there's a magnetic field, and instead of spinning, there's a barely perceptible wobble of the spin. Physicists call this wobble the anomalous magnetic moment.

In the constellation Aquila, about 40,000 light-years away, one of the most powerful natural accelerators in the Galaxy is at work. It's the microquasar GRS 1915+105—a pair consisting of an ordinary star and a black hole.

Pulsar PSR J1740+1000 is a city-sized star spinning faster than a kitchen blender. After a supernova explosion, it left behind a dense core that accelerates particles to near-light speeds. These particles fly into space, and previously it was thought they scatter in all directions, like splashes from a stone thrown into water.

At the Large Hadron Collider, protons are smashed together, and among the debris, a heavyweight particle, the lambda baryon, sometimes appears. It lives for a tiny fraction of a second before decaying into other particles.