Hadrons are composite physical systems consisting of quarks bound together by gluons via the non-Abelian SU(3) color gauge interaction of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). They are color-neutral and fall into two main classes: baryons, composed of three valence quarks (qqq), and mesons, composed of a quark–antiquark pair (q\bar{q}). Their structure is governed by confinement, asymptotic freedom, and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking, leading to rich spectra of resonances and internal parton distributions. Hadrons dominate strongly interacting matter, determine the properties of nuclear systems, and serve as primary probes of QCD in both perturbative and nonperturbative regimes.
The ALICE Collaboration takes a step further in addressing the question of whether a quark–gluon plasma can be formed in proton–proton and proton–nucleus collisions. In the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, the universe ...
General Physics
Mar 20, 2026
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Scientists from the University of Manchester have played a leading role in the discovery of a new subatomic particle at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The particle, known as the Ξcc⁺ (Xi‑cc‑plus), is a new type of heavy ...
General Physics
Mar 17, 2026
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The NA62 Collaboration has dramatically reduced the uncertainty in its measurement of an extremely rare particle decay, in results just presented at the 2026 La Thuile conference.
General Physics
Mar 4, 2026
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Getting an up-close view of life at the cellular level can be as simple as placing onion skin under a microscope and adjusting the knobs. Peering deeper, into the heart of the atoms within, isn't as easy. It requires peeling ...
General Physics
Feb 27, 2026
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In its first moments, the infant universe was a trillion-degree-hot soup of quarks and gluons. These elementary particles zinged around at light speed, creating a "quark-gluon plasma" that lasted for only a few millionths ...
General Physics
Jan 28, 2026
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A boiling sea of quarks and gluons, including virtual ones—this is how we can imagine the main phase of high-energy proton collisions. It would seem that particles here have significantly more opportunities to evolve than ...
General Physics
Dec 4, 2025
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Deep in the heart of the matter, some numbers don't add up. For example, while protons and neutrons are made of quarks, nature's fundamental building blocks bound together by gluons, their masses are much larger than the ...
General Physics
Nov 18, 2025
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The experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detect rare events on a daily basis, but some are exceptionally rare, such as this latest result from the CMS collaboration. For the first time, the collaboration has observed ...
General Physics
Nov 3, 2025
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For the first time, by studying quantum correlations between triplets of secondary particles created during high-energy collisions in the LHC accelerator, it has been possible to observe their coherent production. This achievement ...
General Physics
Oct 16, 2025
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The small but ubiquitous proton serves as a foundation for the bulk of the visible matter in the universe. It abides at the very heart of matter, giving rise to everything we see around us as it anchors the nuclei of atoms. ...
General Physics
Sep 11, 2025
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