Portal:Physics

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Physics portal

An artist's impression of an accretion disk of hot plasma orbiting a black hole (from NASA).

Physics is the science of the natural world. It deals with the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces they exert on one another, and the consequences of these forces. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena spanning all size scales: from the subatomic particles of which all matter is made (particle physics) to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole (cosmology).

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History of physics | Biographies of physicists

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These are the 6 quarks and their most likely decay modes. Mass decreases moving from right to left.

In particle physics, quarks are one of the two basic constituents of matter (the other Standard Model fermions are the leptons).

Antiparticles of quarks are called antiquarks. Quarks are the only fundamental particles that interact through all four of the fundamental forces. The word was borrowed by Murray Gell-Mann from the book Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, where seabirds give "three quarks", akin to three cheers (probably onomatopoetically imitating a seabird call, like "quack" for ducks).

The names of quark flavours (up, down, strange, charm, bottom, and top) were also chosen arbitrarily based on the need to name them something that could be easily remembered and used.

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This high resolution image of the HUDF includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, are some of the most distant galaxies to have been imaged by an optical telescope, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field, or HUDF, is an image of a small region of space in the constellation Fornax, composited from Hubble Space Telescope data accumulated over a period from September 3, 2003 through January 16, 2004. It is the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light, looking back in time more than 13 billion years. The HUDF contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies.

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Did you know

...that Isaac Newton originally defined force as the rate of change of momentum with respect to time?
...that while Albert Einstein is most famous for his Theory of Relativity, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect?
...that if you could see Jupiter's magnetic field from Earth, it would appear five times larger than the full moon?
...that Max Planck created a system of measurement based solely on natural units?
...that the fine structure constant may be 'drifting'?
...that Lasers can be used to separate two isotopes very efficiently?
...that in 2007, CERN will open the world's highest energy particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider?
...that neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoonful could weigh more than every person on Earth?
...that every year, the Moon moves 3.82 cm away from Earth?
...that gold leaf is about 300 atoms thick?