Vacuum Produces Real Quark Pairs

The STAR experiment at Brookhaven's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider reports direct evidence that quark–antiquark pairs can be promoted from virtual fluctuations in the QCD vacuum into real, detectable particles. Researchers identified spin correlations in hyperons produced in proton collisions that match the prediction that those quarks originated in the vacuum and were promoted by the collision energy; the result appears in Nature. — Confirms a long‑standing QCD prediction experimentally, tightening constraints on models of the quantum vacuum and informing theoretical and experimental directions in particle physics and cosmology.