collider physics

Compilations showing AI-controlled characters fighting each other with realistic active ragdoll physics are attracting large audiences online. The videos feature non-player characters colliding, stumbling and reacting dynamically in simulated battles, a style of physics simulation that has become popular for its unpredictable, often comic results.

Physicists have reported a new computational route for calculating gluon production in proton–nucleus collisions. Gluons are the particles that bind quarks together, and predictions of their production in collisions involving protons and heavy nuclei are central to tests of quantum chromodynamics and to interpreting results from colliders such as the LHC. The work offers an alternative approach where previous calculations were difficult, and is being noted by researchers in high-energy nuclear physics.