Context
The world’s most powerful particle collider, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will begin smashing protons into each other at unprecedented levels of energy.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
- The Large Hadron Collider is a giant, complex machine built to study particles that are the smallest known building blocks of all things.
- The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was constructed to figure out what the Higgs field is, how it works, etc. It is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
- It was constructed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in partnership with over 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, universities, and laboratories.
- It was constructed to do much more than discovering the Higgs Boson.
- The objective of the LHC was to help physicists test predictions of various theories of particle physics.
- This included measuring the properties of the Higgs Boson and also searching for the big family of new particles as predicted by supersymmetric theories.
- The collider has four crossing points, around which are positioned seven detectors, each designed for certain kinds of research.
- The LHC primarily collides proton beams, but it can also use beams of heavy ions: lead–lead collisions and proton–lead collisions are typically done for one month per year.
- Scientists will record and analyse the data, which are expected to throw up evidence of “new physics” — or physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by four fundamental forces.
Purpose behind the LHC
- Many physicists hope that the Large Hadron Collider will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, which concern the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity.
- Data is also needed from high-energy particle experiments to suggest which versions of current scientific models are more likely to be correct – in particular to choose between the Standard Model and Higgs Less model and to validate their predictions and allow further theoretical development.
- The ultimate aim of the LHC’s detectors is to allow physicists to test the predictions of different theories of particle physics, including measuring the properties of the Higgs boson and searching for the large family of new particles predicted by supersymmetric theories, as well as other unsolved questions of physics.
About ??‘New Physics’
- After the discovery of the Higgs boson, scientists have started using the data collected as a tool to look beyond the Standard Model, which is currently the best theory of the most elementary building blocks of the universe and their interactions.
- Scientists at CERN say they don’t know what Run 3 will reveal; the hope is to use the collisions to further the understanding of so-called “dark matter”.
- This hard-to-detect, hoped-for particle is believed to make up most of the universe, but is completely invisible as it does not absorb, reflect, or emit light.
