The fundamental particle of light is both ordinary and full of surprises.
What physicists refer to as photons, other people might just call light. As quanta of light, photons are the smallest possible packets of electromagnetic energy. If you are reading this article on a screen or a page, streams of photons are carrying the images of the words to your eyes.
In science, photons are used for more than just illumination.
“They’re ubiquitous,” says Richard Ruiz, a research associate at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow, Poland, and a theorist looking for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. “Photons are everywhere in particle physics, so you almost forget about them.”
The photon has fueled centuries of discovery, and it remains an important tool today.
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