high-energy physics

American

[hahy-en-er-jee] / ˈhaɪˈɛn ər dʒi /

noun

the branch of particle physics that deals with the collisions of particles accelerated to such high energies that new elementary particles are created by the collisions.

high-energy physics British

noun

another name for particle physics

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of high-energy physics

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

"It's an ideal project for the MSU high-energy physics group."

From Science Daily • Nov. 26, 2025

For example, high-energy physics receives an additional $304 million, and nuclear physics gets $217 million more.

From Science Magazine • Aug. 9, 2022

Gary Marcus has argued for ‘‘a coordinated, multidisciplinary, multinational effort’’ modeled after the European high-energy physics lab CERN, which has successfully developed billion-dollar science projects like the Large Hadron Collider.

From New York Times • Apr. 15, 2022

Other work established links between the geometric program and high-energy physics.

From Scientific American • Mar. 21, 2022

Nor could dispensers of government patronage merely weigh scientific projects against one another: the cost of high-energy physics had become so great that broader priorities were implicated.

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023