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 ...

The ALICE collaboration recently obtained the first direct measurement of the attraction between a proton and a ρ 0 meson – a particle of particular interest due to its fleeting lifetime and close ...

Subatomic physics has shaped both the conduct of war and the treatment of cancer. Joseph Rotblat, who left the Manhattan Project on moral grounds and later advanced radiotherapy, embodies this dual ...

The briefing book of the 2026 update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics was published in October. Paris Sphicas highlights key takeaways from each of its 10 themes in fundamental science ...

When targeting tumours, protons and heavy ions offer distinct advantages compared to conventional X-ray radiotherapy. PTCOG president Marco Durante describes an exciting future for the technology and ...

Angelica Facoetti explains five facts accelerator physicists need to know about radiobiology to work at the cutting edge of particle therapy. In 1895, mere months after Wilhelm Röntgen discovered ...

Uncharted territory An oxygen–oxygen collision in the CMS detector (left) and a neon–neon collision in the ATLAS detector (right). Credits: CMS; ATLAS “Early analyses have already helped characterise ...

Powering down Among other important measures, a new report from the LDG Sustainability Working Group highlights the strategic importance of R&D to improve the energy efficiency of klystrons. Credit: N ...

Francesca Luoni advises early-career researchers on how to shield their career while transitioning from research to engineering, and back again. Francesca Luoni is a senior research scientist in the ...

Einstein’s Entanglement: Bell Inequalities, Relativity, and the Qubit, by William Stuckey, Michael Silberstein and Timothy McDevitt, Oxford University Press Quantum entanglement is the quantum ...

Uncovering Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model: From Fundamental Concepts to Dynamical Mechanisms, by Wolfgang Bietenholz and Uwe-Jens Wiese, Cambridge University Press Not for the faint of ...

A report from the CMS experiment. Fig. 1. The performance of a transformer network tagger for identifying large-radius jets containing two b-quarks (for example, from an X → bb decay), compared with ...