Something has been lurking in empty space, and for the first time, physicists may have caught it leaving fingerprints. Quantum theory has long predicted that the vacuum seethes with virtual ...

Neutron-star cores contain matter at the highest densities reached in our present-day universe, with as much as two solar masses of matter compressed inside a sphere of 25 km in diameter. These ...

This video turns subatomic particles into a chaotic ranking of the tiny pieces that build reality. It breaks down quarks, ...

Whether nuclear matter is distinct from quark matter, in other words separated by a phase transition, is an old question in the study of strong interactions, specifically the theory of quantum ...

When massive stars collapse, they can form neutron stars—objects so dense that atoms themselves are crushed apart. But some ...

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.

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 ...

Small Very Fast Rotating (VFR) asteroids (bodies with rotation periods as short as 25 sec) are consistent with a population of strange asteroids [with quark dark matter] with core masses of order ...

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 ...

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 ...

Representation of nuclear matter on the left and of quark matter on the right. The question mark alludes to the question of whether these liquids can be distinguished in a theoretically rigorous ...

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 ...