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The Pixel Vertex Detector (PXD), at the size of just a soda can, forms the innermost detector layer of the international Belle II experiment. It has now been installed at its destination, the SuperKEKB electron-positron accelerator in Japan. The…

Normally, physicists try to describe our world. It may therefore come as a surprise that over the last few decades more and more interest has developed in a theory that is at best a caricature of our universe. It bears the mysterious name N=4 Super…

The CRESST experiment has specialized in the search for light dark matter particles, lighter than 1 Gigaelectronvolts (1 GeV). In order to reliably measure the tiny energy released by these particles in the detectors, those must be very precisely…

Supernovae, stellar explosions of gigantic proportions, are powered by the lightest elementary particles of all: neutrinos. These come in three different varieties, which are called flavors. Until now, it was assumed that the neutrinos in a supernova…

The MADMAX project initiated by the Max Planck Institute is the focus of a newly established research collaboration: the French research organization CNRS and three German Helmholtz centers have joined forces to form the Dark Matter Lab (DMLab). The…

When matter meets antimatter, they annihilate each other within fractions of a second. In the process, the entire mass is converted into energy. However, this annihilation process can be delayed if the particle density is extremely low and the…

On the occasion of the farewell of its long-time director Prof. Dr. Siegfried ("Siggi") Bethke, the Max Planck Institute for Physics (MPP) cordially invites to an honorary colloquium on May 16, 2023, 3:00 pm.

The proton is one of three building blocks of the atom. Thus protons, together with neutrons and electrons, form the matter we know. Since the 1960s, we have known that a proton consists of three quarks. However, researchers now have a much more…

Black holes as quantum computers? Sounds like science fiction, but it is a realistic scenario. No other system stores quantum information as efficiently as black holes. It is therefore conceivable that intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations could…

String theory is a theory to unify two otherwise incompatible concepts: It creates a mathematical substructure to accommodate both quantum physics and gravity. With string theory our reality would not be composed of particles, but of tiny, vibrating…