In the first fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe was a hot, dense ocean of perfectly free-flowing particles called a quark-gluon plasma. It didn't last long—all the gluons and ...

Combinations of three quarks (RGB) or three antiquarks (CMY) are colorless, as are appropriate combinations of quark/antiquark pairs. The gluon exchanges that keep these entities stable are quite ...

The internal structure of a proton, with quarks, gluons, and quark spin shown. The nuclear force acts like a spring, with negligible force when unstretched but large, attractive forces when stretched ...

For a quarter of a century, physicists have faced a paradox regarding the net spin of protons and neutrons – the spin of their constituent quarks accounts for only a small fraction of their overall ...

"These results confirm our suspicion that a lot of the gluons' contribution to proton spin comes from the gluons with relatively low momentum," said Ralf Seidl, a physicist from the RIKEN-BNL Research ...

The atomic nucleus is made up of protons and neutrons, particles that exist through the interaction of quarks bonded by gluons. It would seem, therefore, that it should not be difficult to reproduce ...

These force-carrying particles are the glue that binds baryonic matter together. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Breaking space ...

One of the great theoretical challenges facing physicists is understanding how the tiniest elementary particles give rise to most of the mass in the visible universe. A physicist from MIT will talk ...

An unusual alliance between physicists who study ultrahot plasmas and ultracold atoms is yielding intriguing results – and may even lead to an experimental test for string theory, as Barbara Jacak ...

New data from particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), an "atom smasher" at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, reveals how the primordial ...

Researchers have been working for decades to understand the architecture of the subatomic world. One of the knottier questions has been where the proton gets its intrinsic angular momentum, otherwise ...