- 3569 - LARGE HADRON COLLIDER - The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland has new upgrades to make it an even more powerful “hadron collider‘. What’s a hadron?
--------------------- 3569 - LARGE HADRON COLLIDER
- Hadrons are subatomic particles, namely proton and neutrons. They make up most of the mass in all atoms. And, they are made up of more fundamental particles called “quarks“.
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- In the 14 years since the LHC was first turned on, the particle accelerator has explored some of the biggest mysteries in the universe, colliding countless fundamental particles at near the speed of light in a tunnel 328 feet underground.
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- What mysteries of the universe could the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator unlock?
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- One of the most amazing things about the LHC is that scientists don't know exactly what might happen when they smash protons together at nearly the speed of light. Despite its years of driving groundbreaking science, at the end of Run 2 in 2018, scientists estimated that the LHC had only delivered about 3% of the data expected in its lifetime.
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- Now the Large Hadron Collider will explore the cutting edge of physics after 3-year shutdown. The most famous discovery to come out of the LHC to-date, the Higgs boson, is an elementary particle the existence of which was confirmed in 2012.
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- First proposed in 1964 by a group of theorists including Peter Higgs and François Englert, the Higgs boson was the last undiscovered particle predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that explains all known fundamental forces and particles in the universe.
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- The “Higgs boson” was suggested as an explanation for why certain particles have mass. The particle is associated with what is called the “Higgs field“, which gives mass to other elementary or fundamental particles like electrons and the quarks that make up protons. The particle even gets its own mass from interactions with its own Higgs field.
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- Not all fundamental particles have mass: The “photon“, or light particle, has no mass.
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- Scientists hope that with the help of the LHC, they will be able to find particles that constitute “dark matter‘, the never-before-observed stuff that makes up about 80% of all matter in the universe. Although dark matter is invisible material, of stars, planets and galaxies. We can't see dark matter but we know it's there because we can see its effects.
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- Dark matter is most of the matter in the universe, and we have no idea what it is. Scientists have a number of different dark matter candidates. If the LHC detects a potential dark-matter particle, it will require confirmation from the other experiments to prove that it is indeed a dark-matter particle.
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- While its name might seem to imply that dark energy is similar to dark matter, their connection lies in the name alone. “Dark energy” is also invisible and expansive. Dark energy is a mysterious force suspected to make up nearly 75% of the universe, and scientists think it's causing the expansion of the universe is speeding up.
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- While the LHC is designed to experiment with particles, some theorists have suggested that if dark energy is a type of force or field, then the LHC could be used to investigate that idea, similarly to how the LHC used the Higgs field to produce the Higgs boson.
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- Scientists have also suggested that dark energy, if it's a type of field, could produce light-weight particles. One of the candidates that's gotten serious attention over the years has been “weakly interacting massive particles“, or WIMPs.
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- These are hypothetical particles that are said to interact via forces including gravity and which might exist outside of the Standard Model of particle physics.
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- Researchers have simulated early galaxy formation in the early universe under three dark matter scenarios: a universe filled with cold dark matter ; warm dark matter ; and fuzzy dark matter . “Axions” are another hypothetical elementary particle that have been in the spotlight as “WIMPs” have lost a bit of their luster in the scientific community.
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- The “axion“, proposed in 1977, has both low mass and low energy; in 2020, physicists found the first direct evidence of axions and fanned the flames of interest in this particle as a dark matter candidate.
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- Scientists have proposed a number of possible experiments that could be used to try and "catch" an axion, but, as researchers described in a 2018.
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- “Neutrinos“, or "ghost particles" because of their elusive nature, were spotted for the first time in a particle accelerator in 2021. The discovery was made at the LHC and was a major breakthrough for physics that has opened up a whole world of subatomic mysteries.
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- Neutrinos are subatomic particles similar to electrons with no electrical charge and such a small mass that scientists used to think they had no mass at all. Neutrinos are thought to be one of the most prevalent particles in the entire universe; every second, about 100 billion neutrinos pass through every square centimeter of the human body and these particles, produced in the hearts of stars through nuclear fusion, are everywhere.
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- Because neutrinos don't interact much with matter (neutrinos only interact via gravity and the weak force) and because of their lack of charge and tiny mass, they have been remarkably difficult to spot in particle accelerators. LHC's landmark 2021 detection changed that, and with this big "first" accomplished.
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- “Supersymmetry” is a fundamental mystery of the universe that continues to lurk in the back of scientists' minds. Supersymmetry is a theory suggesting that all of the universe's fundamental particles should have counterpart theoretical "superparticles."
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- This theory, which is an extension of the Standard Model, says that when elementary particles (like photons or electrons) were formed at the beginning of the universe, they were created alongside matching "superparticles." The theory suggests that every particle seen in the Standard Model has a partner particle that spins differently. However, there has been no concrete, direct evidence of supersymmetry.
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- One of the big questions lingering about our universe is why there is so much more matter than antimatter. As we understand it, the Big Bang should have created nearly equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the early universe. (Antimatter particles have the same mass as their counterpart matter particles, but with an opposite electric charge.) But the universe today appears to be primarily composed of matter, with very little antimatter.
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- With equal amount of antimatter and matter the two types would have essentially canceled one another out, leaving behind an empty universe.
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- But that slight asymmetry between matter and antimatter at the Big Bang isn't fully explained by the Standard Model and physicists are also unsure how this slight asymmetry led to the “matter-dominated universe” that we live in today.
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- Earlier in 2022, the largest matter-antimatter asymmetry was observed with this experiment. Future investigation could reveal new details about why and how our universe came to be.
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- If the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator is good at one thing, it's smashing particles together. This technology has enabled incredible steps forward in the field of particle physics, including creating and observing strange, new particles that scientists had only suspected might exist. From 2011 to 2021, scientists using the LHC discovered 59 new types of “hadron particles“.
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- Among those, in 2018, was a strange "mystery particle"; in 2021, a rare four-quark "tetraquark" particle, a non-elementary particle, was spotted at the LHC. And, the Higgs boson discovery at the LHC certainly counts as a remarkable particle find.
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- As researchers continue to smash protons near the speed of light and explore the fringes of what we know to be true about the universe, it's likely that strange, new particles will continue to pop up during the LHC's new operational phase.
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- The Standard Model describes all known forces and particles in the universe; it's the best "theory of everything" that scientists have to work with. But the Standard Model isn't complete and, as we explore major unknowns like dark matter and dark energy, researchers continue to explore how they might need to extend the Standard Model.
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- The LHC, allows scientists to both confirm what we already suspect about the Standard Model and also see where the model falls short, whether physicists may need to extend the theory or break the model apart altogether.
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May 5, 2022 LARGE HADRON COLLIDER 3569
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