In lead collisions at the LHC, some of the strongest electromagnetic fields in the universe bombard the inside of the beam pipe with radioactive gold. By following the collision fragments, John Jowett ...

Mature design The CEPC Study Group has published a technical design report for its reference detector. Credit: CEPC Study Group 2025 arXiv:2510.05260 In October, the Circular Electron–Positron ...

With the story of quarkonia entering its final chapter, John Ellis shares personal recollections of five decades of discoveries and debates about the simplest composite object in QCD, whose history is ...

Orthodox quantum mechanics is empirically flawless, but founded on an awkward interface between quantum systems and classical probes. In this feature, Carlo Rovelli – himself the originator of the ...

With a new measurement imminent, the Courier explores the experimental results and theoretical calculations used to predict ‘muon g-2’ – one of particle physics’ most precisely known quantities and ...

Vivian Poulin asks if the tension between a direct measurement of the Hubble constant and constraints from the early universe could be resolved by new physics. On large scales the dominant motion of ...

Marek Karliner and Jonathan Rosner ask what makes tetraquarks and pentaquarks tick, revealing them to be at times exotic compact states, at times hadronic molecules and at times both – with much still ...

Patrick Koppenburg and Marco Pappagallo survey the 23 exotic hadrons discovered at the LHC so far. Twenty-three exotic states Five pentaquarks and 18 tetraquarks have been discovered so far at the LHC ...

Alexander Lenz argues that the charm quark is an experimental and theoretical enigma that has the potential to shed light on the matter–antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Threading the needle The ...

First developed for the Large Hadron Collider, hybrid pixel detectors are now changing the face of X-ray imaging in medical practice. The next challenge is for a diverse range of societal applications ...

Geared for discovery more so than delicacy, the LHC is defying expectations by rivalling lepton colliders for precision. Guillelmo Gomez-Ceballos and Jan Kretzschmar identify five measurements of the ...

On-chip acceleration pioneers Robert Byer, Joel England, Peter Hommelhoff and Roy Shiloh report on progress to miniaturise accelerators from centimetres to microns. Accelerators on a chip Forty long ...