The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is about to start smashing protons together at unprecedented energy levels in its quest to reveal more secrets about how the universe works.
Key highlights
From July 5, the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider will run around the clock for nearly four years at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN). This is the LHC’s third run.
New physics
Scientists will record and analyse the data, which are expected to throw up evidence of “new physics”.
The new physics is a physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which explains how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by four fundamental forces.
Detectors
- The ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb detectors are installed in four huge underground caverns located around the ring of the LHC.
- Two new detectors installed during the LHC’s recent shutdown are FASER, the Forward Search Experiment, and SND, the Scattering and Neutrino Detector.
- FASER will search for light and weakly interacting particles, including neutrinos and possible dark matter, while SND will focus on neutrinos exclusively.
Higgs boson
- Ten years ago, on July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN had announced the discovery of the Higgs boson or the ‘God Particle’ during the LHC’s first run.
- The discovery concluded the decades-long quest for the ‘force-carrying’ subatomic particle, and proved the existence of the Higgs mechanism, a theory put forth in the mid-sixties.
- This led to Peter Higgs and his collaborator François Englert being awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013. The Higgs boson and its related energy field are believed to have played a vital role in the creation of the universe.
About Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
- The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest particle collider.
- LHC is a 27-km-long track-loop buried 100 metres underground on the Swiss-French border.
- In its operational state, it fires two beams of protons almost at the speed of light in opposite directions inside a ring of superconducting electromagnets.
- The magnetic field created by the superconducting electromagnets keeps the protons in a tight beam and guides them along the way as they travel through beam pipes and finally collide.
- The accelerator first switched on its beams on Sept. 10, 2008, colliding particles at only a ten-millionth of its original design intensity.
- It turned off in 2018 for upgrades, and switched on again on April 22, 2022, with higher power and double the collision rate. The goal is to ramp up the energy of the collisions to a record-breaking 13.6 TeV.
Standard Model of Particle Physics
- The Standard Model of Particle Physics is scientists’ current best theory to describe the most basic building blocks of the universe.
- The model explains how particles called quarks (which make up protons and neutrons) and leptons (which include electrons) make up all known matter.
- It also explains how force carrying particles, which belong to a broader group of bosons, influence the quarks and leptons.
- The Standard Model explains three of the four fundamental forces that govern the universe: electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force.
Big Bang theory
- Our universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive expansion that blew space up like a gigantic balloon.
- That, in a nutshell, is the Big Bang theory, which virtually all cosmologists and theoretical physicists endorse. The evidence supporting the idea is extensive and convincing.
(Sources: The Indian Express, Space.com, Live Science, etc)
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