Tag: cern

In 2012, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, proved the existence of the Higgs boson, the elementary particle that grants other particles their mass. The discovery confirmed a mathematical theory at the core of the Standard Model of physics, which tries to explains why the physical universe works the way it does. And it was only possible thanks to the Large Hadron Collider, a ring of superconducting magnets buried hundreds of feet below CERN’s laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland. The collider accelerates subatomic particles to extremely high speeds and smashes them together to find out what they’re made of.

Peter McIntyre, a physicist and particle accelerator expert at Texas A&M University, and his colleagues think there may be more particles and natural forces in the universe that, like the Higgs boson, can only be discovered through high energy collisions—bigger collisions than the Large Hadron Collider can create. Gizmodo interviewed him about his ambitious proposal for a machine that could make those discoveries: A particle accelerator 2,000 kilometers in circumference floating in the Gulf of Mexico, which McIntyre and his colleagues have dubbed Collider in the Sea.

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Significant recent advancements spearheaded with support from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, are revealing deeper insights into the fundamental nature of our universe.

The ongoing experiments at CERN aim to explore the smallest building blocks of matter and the forces governing them. Unveiling the dynamics of these forces is allowing scientists to inch toward a better fundamental understanding of the universe’s origins, structure, and behavior.

An intergovernmental organization, CERN is home to the largest and most advanced particle physics laboratory found anywhere in the world. It also houses the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27-kilometer ring comprised of superconducting magnets that researchers working at the facility use to boost the energy of particles, enabling experiments that cannot be achieved anywhere else on Earth and which reveal clues about some of the most intriguing questions physicists have about the nature of matter and energy.

In recent weeks, an ongoing series of achievements made possible by CERN has marked significant strides toward resolving these lingering questions about the cosmos. In April, researchers working at the facility announced a new milestone in measuring the electroweak mixing angle, in new findings that will further refine scientists’ understanding of the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

The achievement, part of an ongoing collaboration with researchers from the University of Rochester and global members of the particle physics community, will help to shed light on the conditions that immediately followed the explosive birth of our universe and shed new insights into the lingering mysteries of particle physics.

Led by University of Rochester experimental particle physicist Arie Bodek, the work was carried out with support from Europe’s premier particle physics laboratory and the famous Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN facility and was part of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Collaboration.

A key element of the Standard Model, the electroweak mixing angle, also called the Weinberg angle, is used by physicists to describe the relative strength of the electromagnetic and weak forces, as well as how they combine to form the electroweak interaction. Measuring this is helpful in terms of understanding the universe’s fundamental forces and how they work together at extremely small scales, which scientists hope will offer deeper insights into the properties of matter and energy.

Such insights could greatly improve our understanding of the Standard Model, which describes our current best understanding of particle interactions and predicts numerous phenomena in physics and astronomy.

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July 4th marks 10 years since scientists at CERN, the world’s largest research centre based near Geneva, announced the existence of the Higgs Boson. A team of 6000 researchers working with the world’s first atom splitter, the Large Hardron Collider.

The discovery of the long-sought for particle behind the origin of mass saw François Englert and Peter Higgs awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 45 years later after they proposed the theory, they cracked the practical side too. 

For this iconic anniversary, CERN has announced it will restart its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine which studies the origins of matter, and the universe.

Halting the activity of LHC for three years, CERN took the time to upgrade it. On July 5th, For the third time in its history, the Large Hadron Collider, will restart to an unprecedented level of collision energy (13.6 trillion electronvolts).

Delphine Jacquet, an engineer in charge of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), explains the technicalities the team will carry out to continue the studies.

“We will put in a collision, for the first time, in the LHC, protons at an energy record of 6.8 tev per beam. At this energy the collision will be at 13.6 tera electron volts (tev), and this will be a very nice record for the experiment.”

Jacquet continues: “From this moment on, it will be the data taken from the experiment, for a long run of 3 years, hoping that we will have new discoveries and interesting things coming out from these collisions.”

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