Our account of the strong nuclear force is full of imaginative terms. Six flavors of quarks have color charges of red, green and blue, which dictate how they bind to form particles like protons and ...

AMES, Iowa – John Lajoie, surrounded in his office by Star Trek posters and a few space hero action figures, recently made the case for nuclear physics research and the multi-million-dollar ...

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In nuclear beta decay an up quark ‘u’ in a proton converts into an up down quark ‘d,’ turning the proton into a neutron and emitting a positron and a neutrino. This work affects interpretation of beta ...

We are getting closer to understanding when the strong nuclear force loosens its grip on the most basic constituents of matter, letting quarks and gluons inside particles abruptly turn into a hot ...

Nucleons, comprising protons and neutrons, are not elementary particles but are built from quarks and gluons held together by the strong nuclear force. At typical inter-nucleon distances, effective ...