Watch: What is the zeptoverse?

Scientists have picked up signals from the smallest scale of nature ever explored – 100 billion times smaller than an atom. A world so small that some physicists have nicknamed it the zeptoverse.

The research, led by scientists based in Cambridge, was obtained from an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This vast machine at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (Cern) on the Swiss-French border smashes atoms together to break them apart and discover what is inside them.

The result is important because it could help researchers develop a new, more complete theory of how the Universe works.

The BBC’s science correspondent Pallab Ghosh explains just how small the zeptoverse is.

Related topics

• Physics
• Science & Environment
• Particle physics