Illustration of a polaron The bright sphere is the electron, which is distorting the surrounding lattice. The wavy lines are high-order Feynman diagrams for the electron–phonon interaction. (Courtesy: ...

Mathematics and physics share a close, reciprocal relationship. Mathematics offers the language and tools to describe physical phenomena, while physics drives the development of new mathematical ideas ...

Back in 1948, the journal Physical Review published a paper entitled “Space-Time Approach to Quantum Electrodynamics” by a young physicist named R.P. Feynman at Cornell University. The paper described ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. Most of the coverage of this adopts the framing of talking about this ...

Mathematicians and physicists have noticed a strange coincidence occurring between their respective fields: the values computed from particle physics experiments seem to correspond with a specific set ...

At the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, physicists shoot protons around a 17-mile track and smash them together at nearly the speed of light. It’s one of the most finely tuned scientific experiments ...

The muon storage ring at Fermilab. Credit: Reidar Hahn/Wikimedia Commons Magnetic moment is an intrinsic property of a particle with spin, arising from interaction between the particle and a magnet or ...

Magnetic moment is an intrinsic property of a particle with spin, arising from interaction between the particle and a magnet or other object with a magnetic field. Like mass and electric charge, ...

Recently, I watched a fellow particle physicist talk about a calculation he had pushed to a new height of precision. His tool? A 1980s-era computer program called FORM. Particle physicists use some of ...