In January 2026, we published an article; "What's dark energy up to"? The article discussed research from Yonsei university in South Korea that re-examined how astronomers had measured cosmic distances using type 1a supernovae as standard candles. The brightness of a Type1a supernova falls off as the square of the distance. So, if you double the distance, the brightness falls off by a quarter. By comparing the measured brightness to the standard, you can determine distance to

AI generated image of the IceCube neutrino detector Why a fourth article on neutrinos? Originally, I intended to publish only three articles about neutrinos at the present time, namely; Why are neutrinos so difficult to detect? How do you detect neutrinos? How do you detect neutrino oscillations? But, just as the third article was put on the blog, it was announced, on the 6th October 2026, that Francis Halzen had been awarded the Nobel prize in physics for 2026 for "his decis

This is the third article on neutrinos. Before looking at how neutrino oscillations are detected, let's ask a basic question. Why do Neutrinos Oscillate? When a neutrino is born, it is created in a pure flavour state, (either electron-neutrino, muon-neutrino or tau-neutrino) but in a quantum superposition of three different mass states. When neutrinos travel, because of their tiny masses and the fact that they hardly interact with the environment through which they travel, th

Recap from the first article In the first article on neutrinos, the reasons that they are so difficult to detect were presented. There are only two interactions in which it is possible to be certain which type of neutrino caused it. A neutrino interacts through the weak nuclear force with a DOWN-quark in a neutron, changing it to an UP-quark. The neutron becomes a proton, provided that the neutrino has enough kinetic energy to become the corresponding charged lepton – the ele

This is the first of four articles about neutrinos. Neutrinos are the smallest of all the fundamental particles and are by far, the most numerous particles (with mass) that we know about in the universe. Once considered to be massless and only travel at the velocity of light, they are now known to travel at velocities below that of light and have minute amounts of rest mass. How do they Interact with Matter? They contain no colour charge and so cannot interact through the str

Hopefully, you got the grades you wanted and you are about to embark on a journey into higher education, or you are going to start a job, or an apprenticeship, in the coming months. If you are heading for a career in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics, then you might find the three books in the series; A Journey into Modern Physics by Kieron Conway help you bridge the gap between school science and the real world. It's an exploration of some of the most fascinati

What's really special are the coincidences associated with the size of the moon to that of the sun and the distance of the moon from earth relative to the distance to the sun. Coupled with this, the spectacular view created by a total eclipse is only a recent chapter in the moon's long 4.5 billion year history. Coincidence 1 The sun's actual diameter is approximately 400 times that of the moon and it's distance from earth is 400 times further away than the moon. The extra dis

The Search for Enlightenment! We spend quite a lot of time searching the internet looking for articles, videos, lectures and anything that stands out in terms of providing enlightenment concerning some aspect of modern physics. We're talking about content that suddenly makes sense of something that you mat have been struggling with. No complex maths, just straightforward descriptions that explain the maths behind the subject. ​ When we find something that matches our criteria

We've added another image wall to the website to show off many of the AI images that we generated for the website's blog content. You can access the wall from the additional functions on the main menu of this website. All articles in the blog are headed by an image portraying the general content of the article, like the one shown here for an article about the wonders of water; Occasionally, we also generated AI images within the article, such as the following simplistic depic

It's out! New addition to A Journey into Modern Physics An E-book, or a paper-back version, containing all the articles from the books' website, from August 2025 to July 2026, is now available from AMAZON. You can continue to access the articles from the blog if you wish, but why not add a fourth volume to the complete set of A Journey into Modern Physics by Kieron Conway. This fourth book in the series is suitable for readers of the LIGHT adaptations who wish to advance thei

In Part 1, we looked at magnetism created by unpaired electrons in the outer orbits of atoms that make up a permanent magnet. When all the domain boundaries of a magnetic material are broken down and the magnetic dipoles of all the constituent atoms are forced into the same alignment by a strong external magnetic field, a permanent magnet is created. When the external field is removed, the internal magnetic field remains. This type of magnetism is an inherent, quantum-spin ef

We'll start our exploration into magnetism by looking at bar magnets, which most people will be familiar with, because they have the ability to show us what magnetic fields look like. So, to begin with, we are looking at permanent magnets that never loose their magnetism under normal conditions and it's all associated with the magnetic field that permanent magnets produce. The Magnetic Field All magnets, permanent magnets and electro-magnets, produce a magnetic field. Magneti

Is this your final year at school? Are you contemplating further education? Are you going to join an apprenticeship? Are you heading for a career in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics? School leavers and A Journey into Modern Physics - LIGHT To help you make the jump from schoolroom science to a higher level of understanding in Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics, spend some time preparing for the challenges that wait for you by reading A Journey int

Please note that this article is taken from chapter 13 in Part 2 of a Journey into Modern Physics and represents improved descriptions of the physics associated with entanglement, as well as more up-to-date facts. In particular, as an example of entanglement, the decay of a Higgs boson has been used rather than an unidentified boson with spin 0. Einstein referred to quantum entanglement as ‘spooky action at a distance'. Quantum entanglement occurs when two or more particles

How does the Global Positioning System (GPS) Work? Without Einstein's special relativity and general relativity, we would not have a viable GPS system. The GPS satellites occupy Medium Earth Orbits and each satellite is roughly 20,000 Km above the earth's surface, travelling at about 14,000 Kph. Each satellite completes one orbit of the earth in just under 12 hours and they operate in a series of six orbital planes, designed so that between 6 to 12 satellites are in view anyw

This article expands the description of the proton's content presented in A Journey into Modern Physics in a way that might come as a surprise. The standard answer to how many quarks are there in a proton, is three, but the full quantum structure of a proton is far richer. A proton is not simply three particles stuck together. Modern quantum chromodynamics describes it as a dynamic quantum system consisting of interacting quark and gluon fields. Although a proton does contain

It's almost a year since we started to publish regular articles on physics to allow readers to continue the Journey into Modern Physics. We're putting all the first year articles into an E-book and a paper-back, which will go on sale some time in July. You'll be able to purchase a copy soon and don't forget; you don't need a Kindle to read it! Down-load the Amazon Kindle App onto your phone, tablet, laptop or desktop and you can read the articles anywhere, when it suits you,

First of all, it's not just light that this applies to: it's all electromagnetic waves that propagate through the electromagnetic field. From radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet and X-rays to gamma rays, they all travel at the same constant velocity in space. A Fundamental Reason A fundamental reason for a speed limit is illustrated by one of the most famous thought experiments created by Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955). What would you see if you were

Artistic illustration of the LHC at CERN How does the LHC work? The Large Hadron Collider is a ring-based collider, which accelerates protons in two beam pipes in opposite directions, one clock-wise and the other anti-clockwise. At a number of points in the two rings, the beams are steered into each other and a large number of the protons collide, releasing huge amounts of energy in the form of myriad different particles, including the famous Higgs boson. The LHC was designed

Read it on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops You don't need a Kindle device to enjoy the three-part series A Journey into Modern Physics. Amazon provides the free Kindle App, which allows readers to access Kindle books on a huge range of everyday devices. Whether you prefer reading on a smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer, the Kindle App makes it simple to build your own digital library and read wherever you are. No Kindle Device Required Many readers assume th