The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has returned and broken particles faster than ever, exciting scientists with its enhanced potential.
The Large Hadron Collider is the longest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, passing subatomic particles through a 17-mile (27-kilometer) loop below Geneva at speeds close to that of light. The collider has already resulted in some 3,000 scientific articles since it began operations in 2010; now, with new updates, it’s ready to showcase new ideas, team members say.
“It’s a magical moment,” said Fabiola Gianotti, director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), during a press conference on Tuesday (July 5th) after the new scientific activity of the installation. “We have just had collisions with an unprecedented 13.6 tera-electron volts of energy, and this opens a new era of exploration at CERN,” Gianotti added.
Related: 10 years after the discovery of the Higgs boson, physicists still don’t have enough of the “God particle”
Increased energy, more collisions, and better data collection practices may allow scientists to learn more about the subatomic world, perhaps even surpassing the standard model of particle physics.
“We really hope that in this next run we will collect 10 times more data than before, so we hope we can see a whole host of new phenomena,” Chris Parkes, spokesman for the LHCb experiment. (opens in new tab), he said at the same press conference.
LHCb aims to study the differences between matter and its mirror, known as antimatter, by studying the particle “beauty quark” (or quark b). Parkes noted that it took 15 years of planning to get here, which means that finally operating the updated detector “is a really exciting time.”
The giant ALICE experiment is back in operation this summer. (Image credit: CERN / Maximilien Brice) (opens in a new tab)
Patricia McBride, spokeswoman for the compact muon solenoid detector at CERN, told reporters that the hope is to see “many more Higgs,” referring to Higgs boson scientists who finally discovered almost exactly 10 years using LHC. The so-called “particle of God” predicts the mechanism that gives rise to mass and is fundamental to subatomic physics and the standard model.
McBride said the updated LHC “will be able to take precision measurements to understand what the Higgs is, what it is telling us about nature.” The pivot to using Higgs this way is “really exciting,” McBride added, as “we’re now using it as a tool to look for new physics.”
Discovering these new ideas with Higgs will be useful for studies of the universe in general, Gianotti said: “It is a very special particle with very special properties, which brings new interactions. In a sense, [Higgs] it is related to many open-ended questions related, for example, to the evolution of the universe [and] to match their destiny “.
Although discovery times are unpredictable, Gianotti said the “dream scenario” would be the LHC, which would eventually discover the elusive nature of dark matter, which makes up much of the known but unknown universe. can be seen directly with conventional instruments. (Accurate measurements of dark matter are key to predicting the expansion of the universe, among other things).
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