Topic
Quantum field theory of the strong interaction, describing how quarks and gluons bind into protons, neutrons and other hadrons.
Christopher Monroe's Duke team simulated gluon string breaking on trapped ions and got results similar to earlier neutral-atom and superconducting work. The team found the break starts at the edges, contrary to Schwinger's predictions.
Reality
Shin'ichi Nojiri and S.D. Odintsov argue in Physics of the Dark Universe that negative mass does not always make general relativity inconsistent, on assumptions that include a negative cosmological constant.
Reality
ALICE turned near-miss lead collisions into a photon beam and scanned momentum transfer down to a resolution of 0.2 femtometers, about a quarter of a proton. The drop in J/psi production it found there was not expected.
Reality
A Science paper from RHIC's STAR detector backs a 1996 proposal that a Y-shaped gluon junction carries baryon number. The collider stopped running in early 2026, so the dataset is closed.
Reality
Brookhaven's STAR collaboration reports in Science that baryon number rides on a Y-shaped gluon junction. The one-third-per-quark picture in the textbooks would have to go.
Reality