UK Science and Technology Facilities Council | 2014 Dec 12
British scientists are gearing up for the next running of the world’s biggest science experiment – the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. After a two-year upgrade to nearly double the power of the machine, scientists are hoping to unravel some of the secrets of dark matter. ...
The LHC is the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, and is expected to restart in Spring 2015 for a three-year run of experiments. The whole 27-kilometre long machine is now being cooled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute zero.
The first running of the machine confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson in 2012, but scientists stress they still need to understand the properties of the important new particle, including how it gives mass to other particles, and whether it fully matches the current models of how the Universe works.
Other big questions in physics that this new run of the LHC might help answer include understanding why there is a lack of antimatter in the Universe, proving the existence of dark matter particles and also a better study of Supersymmetry, the theory that predicts the existence of a whole other set of ‘super’ particles.
There are four main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN: ALICE, LHCb, CMS and ATLAS. ...
CERN’s Large Hadron Collider gears up for run 2