{"id":230590,"date":"2026-02-05T05:30:02","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/glimpsing-the-quantum-vacuum-particle-spin-correlations-offer-insight-into-how-visible-matter-emerges-from-nothing"},"modified":"2026-02-05T05:30:02","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T11:30:02","slug":"glimpsing-the-quantum-vacuum-particle-spin-correlations-offer-insight-into-how-visible-matter-emerges-from-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/glimpsing-the-quantum-vacuum-particle-spin-correlations-offer-insight-into-how-visible-matter-emerges-from-nothing","title":{"rendered":"Glimpsing the quantum vacuum: Particle spin correlations offer insight into how visible matter emerges from \u2018nothing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/glimpsing-the-quantum-vacuum-particle-spin-correlations-offer-insight-into-how-visible-matter-emerges-from-nothing.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered experimental evidence that particles of matter emerging from energetic subatomic smashups retain a key feature of virtual particles that exist only fleetingly in the quantum vacuum. The finding offers a new way to explore how the vacuum\u2014once thought of as empty space\u2014provides important ingredients needed to transform virtual \u201cnothingness\u201d into the matter that makes up our world.<\/p>\n<p>The research, just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-025-09920-0\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Nature<\/i>, was carried out by the STAR Collaboration at Brookhaven\u2019s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), a DOE Office of Science user facility for nuclear physics research. The paper presents evidence of a significant correlation in particle spins\u2014a built-in quantum property related to magnetism\u2014among certain pairs of particles emerging from proton-proton collisions at RHIC.<\/p>\n<p>The STAR scientists\u2019 analysis directly links those correlations to the spin alignment of virtual quark-antiquark pairs generated in the quantum vacuum. In essence, the scientists say, RHIC\u2019s collisions give those virtual particles the energetic boost they need to transform into the real particles detected by STAR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy\u2019s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered experimental evidence that particles of matter emerging from energetic subatomic smashups retain a key feature of virtual particles that exist only fleetingly in the quantum vacuum. The finding offers a new way to explore how the vacuum\u2014once thought of as empty space\u2014provides [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}