Scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider have observed particles emerging directly from empty space for the first time, confirming a long-standing prediction of quantum chromodynamics.
The discovery, reported by the STAR collaboration at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, involved high-energy proton collisions inside the lab’s Solenoidal Tracker detector. Researchers detected rare quark-antiquark pairs created from the vacuum itself rather than from the colliding protons.
The finding provides the clearest evidence yet that matter can materialize from what classical physics considers empty space. As such, it could help provide an answer to one of the biggest mysteries in physics: how particles acquire mass.
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