• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

TinFinger_ said:
What if it was possible to inhibit objects interacting with the Higgs field?
Wouldn't that mean they would no longer have mass?
But would they still have to go to confessional? :)
 
How do you inhibit them anyway?

Tell them what they are doing is wrong?

(remember these particles are too small to be affected by conventional physics anyway.)
 
im not sure maybe they can be touched at a quantum level,or maybe creating an anti boson (lol)
point is once we know they are there and exactly what they are thats not necessarily the end of the story for bosons
 
Kondoru said:
How do you inhibit them anyway?

Tell them what they are doing is wrong?

(remember these particles are too small to be affected by conventional physics anyway.)

Transubstantiation might work, it would only make sense on the quantum level anyway.
 
Oi Scargie! Tell the snailette to get more storage space.

Is the LHC throwing away too much data?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... -data.html
16 March 2012 by Lisa Grossman and Maggie McKee
Magazine issue 2856.

IT'S the sort of thing that keeps particle hunters up at night. What if the Large Hadron Collider only turns up the Higgs boson and nothing else? That nightmare would leave the hunt for new physics at a dead end - a fate that could perhaps be avoided if the LHC hung onto more of its data.

Physicists celebrate even tentative signs of the Higgs (see "Still on the run"). Thought to give all other particles mass, the Higgs is the last undiscovered particle in the standard model, our most successful theory for how particles and forces interact.

The trouble is the standard model is incomplete, since it has nothing to say about gravity or dark matter. Unfortunately, no new particles have been found that might point the way to a more powerful theory (see "11 particles for 11 physics puzzles"). "It could be the situation a year from now that nothing will be found at the LHC other than the Higgs," says Tomer Volansky of Tel Aviv University in Israel. "In that situation, we won't really know what to do next."

See graphic: "Where the Higgs could still lie"

At a meeting in La Thuile, Italy, last week, Volansky proposed a solution: the LHC, which is at CERN, near Geneva in Switzerland, should save more of its data. The accelerator's computers only record data when prompted by certain triggers, which are set for expected outcomes, like the particles produced when the simplest version of the Higgs decays. Volansky says we should look for signs of more exotic - and unlikely - physics, such as a new force beyond the four we already know. "We should drop our prejudice and look for anything that is possible," he says. "If we won't check, we won't know."

Others say it is not possible to save more data without extra funding or processing time. The LHC's CMS detector, for example, takes the equivalent of 40 million pictures, each with a resolution of 1 billion pixels, every second. "Storing all the LHC data is impractical," says Sridhara Dasu of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who helped develop the detector's trigger system.

Steven Lowette, another CMS team member at the University of California, Santa Barbara, agrees. Taking more data for one search means taking less for another. "The total will always need to fit in the same bandwidth," he says.

He adds that the hunt for the Higgs will take priority this year, but that when the LHC fires up again in 2015 after a two-year upgrade, it could start to look for more exotic physics. "Searching further in overlooked corners can always come later," Lowette says. "Bandwidth can always be reshuffled in case a new signature gains a high enough priority."

Still, saving even a little more data would give a "taste of exotic events that may encode important information", Volansky says. "No one has told us the answer [to what lies beyond the standard model], so sometimes we have to search in the dark."

Still On the run...
The most wanted particle in physics is still on the loose.

In December, each of the Large Hadron Collider's main detectors, CMS and ATLAS, reported seeing a hint of the Higgs at a mass of about 125 gigaelectronvolts, around 133 times the mass of a proton.

Now one of those groups seems to have lost the scent. At a conference last week in La Thuile, Italy, the ATLAS team reported that the statistical significance of its December signal had weakened on closer inspection.

That signal was based on only two of the Higgs's five possible decay routes, or channels - one that decays into four particles called leptons, and the other into two gamma-ray photons. The new ATLAS result involves the remaining three channels - when the Higgs decays into two W particles, two tau particles, or a bottom quark and a bottom antiquark.

Those three channels so far show no sign of the Higgs, says Sandra Kortner of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany. But Matthew Strassler of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, points out that these three channels create some particles that ATLAS cannot detect. That means the channels carry less information about the Higgs than the two from December, which are "the ones that will be really convincing over time", he says.

Indeed, combining all five channels still leaves room for the Higgs, says Kortner. "We still need more data to really tell." If the LHC operates as planned, the Higgs will be pinned down by the end of 2012.
 
He was too busy hoovering it last week.
 
Crikey. Hope the thing hasn't been booby-trapped... :shock:

France jails Cern physicist Adlene Hicheur for terror plot

A French court has sentenced a scientist at the prestigious Cern laboratory to five years in prison for plotting terrorist attacks.

Adlene Hicheur was arrested in 2009 after police intercepted his emails to an alleged contact in al-Qaeda.

The emails suggested Algerian-born Hicheur was willing to be part of an "active terrorist unit", attacking targets in France.

Defence lawyers argued that their client had never been part of a plot.

Hicheur, who is a particle physicist, worked as a researcher studying the origins of the universe at Cern.

His father embraced him in the Paris courtroom before he was taken away to prison.

Hicheur has already spent two and a half years in jail while awaiting trial.

He came under suspicion when threatening messages were sent to President Sarkozy in early 2008.

The security services uncovered a series of email exchanges between Hicheur and an alleged al-Qaeda member called Mustapha Debchi.

After his arrest in 2009 police found a large quantity of Islamist literature at his parents' home.

At the start of his trial he admitted that he had been going through a psychologically "turbulent" time in his life when he wrote the emails, but always denied he intended to carry out any attacks.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17956202
 
This novel's setting actually predates the LHC, but it could prove interesting background reading!

Steamy novel challenges Cern's serious image
The particle physics laboratories at the Cern laboratory in Switzerland may not sound like a bedrock of hard cash, fast cars and loose women.
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
7:30AM BST 09 Jun 2012

But a steamy new novel written by a retired physicist lifts the lid on the organisation's studious exterior to reveal an altogether more glamorous lifestyle of wild nights, adrenalin-fuelled sports and romantic trysts.

"Catalysed Fusion" is described by its author Francis Farley, 91, as a "true-to-life fantasy woven around particle physics" set in 1980s Geneva – "the city where nations meet and particles collide".

Based on 20 years of experience at the laboratory starting in its early days in 1957, Prof Farley describes a group of young researchers whose groundbreaking work and racy private lives intertwine as they enjoy the high life at Switzerland's top ski resorts and France's best beaches.

Prof Farley revealed that he even based a character on himself – Ivan, a physicist and crack glider pilot who is married to a former stripper and sets up a new lab on a nudist Mediterranean island.

He told the Daily Telegraph: "We were well paid, we had diplomatic status, no taxes. We got tax-free petrol and drinks and we went out and enjoyed life. It is obviously hyped up for the book but it is the sort of thing that went on and I am sure is still going on.

"We worked hard and then some people would go home to their families but there were lots of little floozies about and other men had a roving eye, and so did some of the women." 8)

Prof Farley's esteemed career includes helping to develop microwave radar to control the Dover guns in the Second World War, and winning the Royal Society's Hughes Medal in 1980 for his measurements of muons, a type of subatomic particle.

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... image.html
 
Higgs Boson: Prof Stephen Hawking loses $100 bet
When Peter Higgs first proposed that an invisible field strewn across space gave mass to the building blocks of the universe, the theory was ridiculed by some of the most respected minds of the time.
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
6:05PM BST 04 Jul 2012

His first paper was rejected by a journal, while other scientists accused him and his colleagues of failing to grasp the basic principles of physics.

Despite the sleights [sic] Prof Higgs, at the time an 34-year-old physicist at Edinburgh University, was convinced his idea was right although he never envisaged being able to prove it.
Yesterday, 48 years on, his radical concept was finally proved correct by an international team of physicists at the Cern laboratory using a £6 billion piece of equipment designed to uncover the secrets of the Universe.

Announcing the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, scientists from confirmed they had discovered a new particle bearing all the hallmarks of a Higgs Boson.
The Higgs Boson helps to explain how fundamental particles gain their mass - a property which allows them to bind together and form stars and planets rather than whizzing around the universe at the speed of light.

Prof Higgs, 83, who travelled to Switerland to witness the landmark announcement first-hand, was visibly moved as the presentation was rounded off to tumultuous applause from a wildly excited audience, some of whom had waited overnight to secure their seats.
Choking back tears, he said: “I would like to add my congratulations to everyone involved in this achievement. It’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime.”


His response was characteristically modest. Professor Higgs has repeatedly resisted requests for interviews and comments, insisting the limelight should be taken by the scientists who have proved that his theory is correct.
He has long been uncomfortable even having his name attached to the particle, which is the key missing cornerstone of the Standard Model of physics.

The son of a BBC sound engineer from Newcastle, he was raised in Bristol and excelled at Cotham Grammar School.
During a school assembly he saw the name of a former pupil, the great quantum physicist P.A.M. Dirac, on an honours board and decided to read about his work. He was quickly hooked, reading as much as he could find about the subject to satisfy his curiosity.
He went on to King’s College, London, where he graduated with a first class honours in 1950. He was denied a lectureship at the university, however, so became a researcher at Edinburgh University.

His “eureka” moment reportedly came in a flash of inspiration while on a walking trip to the Cairngorms. When one of his initial papers was rejected, he insisted the journal had clearly not understood him.
Upon publication in 1964, he and his colleagues were ridiculed as young pretenders and urged to abandon their research or risk “professional suicide”.

Prof Gerry Guralnik, an American researcher who published a paper on the same subject with colleagues Tom Kibble and Dick Hagen within months of Higgs, recalled a galling encounter with Werner Heisenberg, the esteemed German physicist who gave his name to the famous “uncertainty principle” of quantum mechanics.
He said: “A lot of famous people told us that we were wrong. Heisenberg told me I did not understand the rules of physics, which is pretty scary if you are 26 and are worried about getting a job.” 8)

Yesterday, the scientific community was united in its praise for Prof Higgs, with some calling for him to be given a knighthood.
Prof Stephen Hawking said Prof Higgs deserved a Nobel Prize for his work, but admitted the discovery of the new particle had come at a cost.
He said: “I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn’t be found. It seems I have just lost $100.” :D

Q&A

What has been found?

Both of the Cern teams have announced the discovery of a new particle which is consistent with theories about the Higgs Boson. Although they haven’t proven it is definitely a Higgs, there is little doubt in most experts’ minds that the sought-after particle has indeed been unearthed at last.

What does it mean?

Finding the Higgs Boson proves the existence of the Higgs Field, a force which provides fundamental particles - the building blocks of the Universe - with their mass. Without mass they would simply zip around the cosmos at the speed of light and never form into stars and planets. It is also the last missing cornerstone of the Standard Model of Physics, which explains what the Universe is composed of.

Will it have any practical applications?

Immediately, no. The purpose of the research was simply to uncover one of the Universe’s great mysteries and further our understanding of science. But experts firmly believe it will be of paramount importance in future research which could provide new breakthroughs.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/scie ... 0-bet.html
 
a wildly excited audience, some of whom had waited overnight to secure their seats.

Heh, that was me. I did that. 8)
 
German woman fails to prove atom-smasher will end world
October 16th, 2012 in Other Sciences / Other

A woman walks past the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). A German woman who feared the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed Tuesday in her court bid to stop the work of the world's most powerful atom smasher.

A German woman who feared the Earth would be sucked into oblivion in a black hole failed Tuesday in her court bid to stop the work of the world's most powerful atom smasher.

The higher administrative court in Muenster, western Germany, rejected her claims, ruling there was no evidence the work of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) posed a danger to public safety.

"The plaintiff ... was worried that the experiments could produce so-called 'black holes' which could eventually lead to the destruction of all life on Earth," the court said.

However, the court noted that the CERN's own safety reports ruled out any danger to life. "Objectively, there is no evidence to doubt the correctness of these safety reports nor was any conclusive evidence presented," it ruled.

The woman had failed in a previous attempt to stop the work of CERN in Switzerland at the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe.

After a quest spanning nearly half a century, CERN scientists in July said they had found a sub-atomic particle that may be the Higgs boson or "God particle", believed to confer mass on matter.

CERN uses a giant underground laboratory where protons are smashed together at nearly the speed of light in the Large Hadron Collider, yielding sub-atomic debris that is then scrutinised for signs of the fleeting Higgs.

Other opponents have also sought to stop the experiments, fearing either a black hole whose super gravity would swallow the Earth or a theoretical particle called a strangelet that would in turn liquidise the planet.

(c) 2012 AFP

"German woman fails to prove atom-smasher will end world." October 16th, 2012. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-german-wom ... world.html
 
Prof Peter Higgs: Prize honours Large Hadron Collider scientist

The scientist who gave his name to the Higgs boson "god particle" hopes a prize named in his honour will inspire a new generation of physics geniuses.
First Minister Alex Salmond has announced an annual prize, named after Prof Peter Higgs, for school students.
Prof Higgs said: "I hope that this will inspire young students of today.
"Rewarding those who have excelled in physics in this way and supporting the next generation of scientists is to be warmly welcomed."

The Higgs Prize, open to Scottish school students who excel in physics, will be formally launched by the First Minister and the scientist on Tuesday.
It is part of a week designed to showcase Scotland's scientific expertise, with Mr Salmond also expected to make a significant announcement about life sciences and mark a landmark in space science.

Prof Higgs hit upon his defining concept during a walk in the Cairngorms in 1964, when he started to consider the existence of a particle that gives matter its mass.
He wrote two scientific papers on his theory and was eventually published in the Physical Review Letters journal, sparking a 40-year hunt for the Higgs boson.
In July, a team from the European nuclear research facility at Cern, Geneva, announced the detection of a particle that fitted the description of the elusive Higgs.

The Higgs Prize will give young physics students the chance to win a trip to Cern, where work researching the Higgs particle continues.
"I know very well how exciting and amazing visits to Cern can be," said the professor, who has retired from Edinburgh University.

Mr Salmond hopes Prof Higgs' achievements would "inspire future generations of Scots".
"His work is celebrated internationally and Scotland is very proud of him," he said.
"The Higgs Prize will be an opportunity for some of Scotland's brightest young school physicists to see for themselves the cutting-edge of international physics at Cern."

Prof Sir Peter Knight, president of the Institute of Physics, said his organisation "will be working with them to establish the best way to identify Scotland's most promising young physicists".
"With £8.5bn of the Scottish economy created by physics-based businesses, this prize is recognition of the vital importance of the subject," he said.

During the week-long exhibition at the Scottish Parliament to celebrate the Scottish contribution to the creation and operation of the Large Hadron Collider visitors are able to walk through a full-size replica of a section of the LHC tunnel.
They will also have the chance to meet Scottish physicists involved in last year's Higgs boson discovery.

As well as the Higgs Prize and a number of other initiatives, this week the government will be announcing the appointment of 33 new health fellows to conduct research into medical challenges such as treating motor neurone disease, how to use technology to help people with diabetes and how to control internal bleeding.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21305723
 
And now, the big one!

Higgs boson scientists win Nobel prize in physics
By James Morgan, Science reporter, BBC News

Two scientists have won the Nobel prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson.
Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, shared the prize.
In the 1960s they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.
The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, in Switzerland.

"This year's prize is about something small that makes all the difference," said Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Professor Higgs is renowned for shying away from the limelight, and he could not be located for interview in the immediate aftermath of the announcement.
"He's gone on holiday without a phone," his Edinburgh University physics colleague Alan Walker told the BBC, adding that Higgs had also been unwell.
"He is taking a break from all of this, taking some time to relax, because he knows when he comes back he'll have to face up to a media storm."

But the university released a prepared statement from Higgs, 84, who is an emeritus professor of theoretical physics:
"I am overwhelmed to receive this award and thank the Royal Swedish Academy," he said.
"I would also like to congratulate all those who have contributed to the discovery of this new particle and to thank my family, friends and colleagues for their support.
"I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."

Francois Englert, 80, said he was "very happy" to win the award, speaking at the ceremony via phone link.
"At first I thought I didn't have it [the prize] because I didn't see the announcement," he told the committee, after their news conference was delayed by more than an hour.

Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, but it was in Edinburgh in 1964 that he had his big idea - an explanation of why the matter in the Universe has substance, or mass.
His theory involved a missing particle in the Standard Model of physics, which has come to be known as the Higgs boson.

Within weeks, Francois Englert independently published his own, similar theory, alongside his now deceased colleague Robert Brout.

Three other physicists - Gerald Guralnik, Tom Kibble and Carl Hagen - also made key contributions to the theory, and spoke at the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

Hagen has long argued for the name of the particle to be changed, protesting at the "rock star" status in which Higgs is held.
And Higgs, too, has expressed his discomfort with the attention he has received, preferring to call the particle "the scalar boson".

In a statement on Tuesday, Kibble, of Imperial College London, said he was "glad" the Nobel Prize had gone to the work of Higgs and Englert.
"My two collaborators, Gerald Guralnik and Carl Hagen, and I contributed to that discovery, but our paper was unquestionably the last of the three to be published.

"It is therefore no surprise that the Swedish Academy felt unable to include us, constrained as they are by a self-imposed rule that the prize cannot be shared by more than three people.
"My sincere congratulations go to the two Prize winners, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs."

Proving their theory correct took almost half a century and involved creating the biggest and most sophisticated machine humankind has ever built.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern lies in a circular tunnel almost 17 miles round. It's so big it's partly in Switzerland, partly in France. It took 10 years and thousands of scientists and engineers to build it.

Cern director general Rolf Heuer said he was "thrilled" that this year's prize had gone to particle physics.
"The discovery of the Higgs boson at Cern... marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world," he said.

The Nobel Prizes - which also cover chemistry, medicine, literature, peace and economics - are valued at 8m Swedish kronor (£750,000; $1.2m). Laureates also receive a medal and a diploma.

The official citation for Englert and Higgs read: "For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the Atlas and CMS experiments at Cern's Large Hadron Collider".

David Willetts, UK minister for universities and science, said the award was "an incredible endorsement of the quality of UK science".

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "This brilliant achievement is richly deserved recognition of Peter Higgs' lifetime of dedicated research and his passion for science.
"It is also a credit to the world-leading British universities in which this research was carried out.
"It took nearly 50 years and thousands of great minds to discover the Higgs boson after Professor Higgs proposed it, and he and all those people should be extremely proud."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24436781
 
"He's gone on holiday without a phone . . . "

I plan to use this phrase shamelessly as an indicator of Nobel worth!

In fact I think there should be a Nobel prize for it. It would not need to be shared between very many of us. :monster:
 
It's back, bigger and badder than before!

Higgs boson spills secrets as LHC prepared for return
By Paul Rincon, Science editor, BBC News website

It's nearly time. After shutting down last year for vital repairs and upgrades, the Large Hadron Collider is being prepared for its comeback.
Engineers at Cern in Geneva have begun cooling the huge machine to its operating temperature of -271.3C, which is colder than deep space.
And the accelerator system that supplies the LHC with its proton particle beams - which are smashed together to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang - is up and running for the first time since 2012.

Teams are working to get the LHC - located in a circular tunnel beneath the French-Swiss border - back online by January 2015 and this time it will operate at its full energy of 14 trillion electron volts.
After the $10bn machine was switched on for the first time in 2008, problems were found with many of the electrical splices between the 1,200 superconducting magnets that bend particle beams around the 27km-long underground ring.
To prevent serious damage, officials decided to run the collider at an energy of seven to eight trillion electron volts - about half what it was designed for.

"Much work has been carried out on the LHC over the last 18 months or so, and it's effectively a new machine, poised to set us on the path to new discoveries," said Cern's director-general Rolf Heuer at the EuroScience Open Forum in Copenhagen this month.

The low energy run from 2010-2012 was nevertheless sufficient to achieve a key scientific goal: Detecting the elusive Higgs boson particle.
The Higgs is the cornerstone of our current best theory of particle physics - the Standard Model. This is the "instruction booklet" that describes how elementary particles (the smallest building blocks of the Universe) and forces interact.

On 4 July 2012, two years ago this week, Cern announced that a five-decade-long search for the particle, first proposed by Edinburgh-based physicist Peter Higgs and others in the 1960s, had reached its conclusion.
Scientists working on Atlas and CMS, the two huge multi-purpose detectors placed at strategic points around the LHC tunnel, saw the Higgs at a 5-sigma level of significance - the statistical threshold for announcing a discovery.

While the LHC has been sitting idle of late, its scientists have not. They've continued to crunch the results from the first science run, and hundreds of them will gather to listen to the latest findings at the ICHEP physics meeting in Valencia, Spain, this week.

Particle physicists have learnt more about the Higgs boson's behaviour and how well it conforms to predictions. In a paper published last week in the journal Nature Physics, researchers outlined how they have watched the Higgs decay into the particles that make up matter (known as fermions), in addition to those that convey force (bosons), which had already been observed.

This is exactly as the Standard Model predicts. Physicists know that this framework, devised in the 1970s, must be a stepping stone to a deeper understanding of the cosmos. But so far, it's standing up exceptionally well. Searches at the LHC for deviations from this elegant scheme - such as evidence for new, exotic particles - have come to nothing.

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28089987
 
Here's the glorious Big American News on the LHC:

PROOF: Scientists Confess Hadron Collider is a Torture Device for God Particle

One week ago, whistleblower Professor Stephen Hawking bravely stepped forward and warned that scientists are torturing a particle of God.

For reasons unknown, the scientists discovered a way to capture a particle of God in what is known as the CERN Large Hadron Collidor that is secretly located somewhere in Switzerland. Instead of worshiping the particle as something sacred and letting it go free, the scientists are trying to rip it apart and figure out how to harness all of its energies.

:lol:

I'm not sure all the commenters grasp the concept of satire. The idea of Prof Hawking stepping forward should be a clue. ;)
 
escargot1 said:
Here's the glorious Big American News on the LHC:

PROOF: Scientists Confess Hadron Collider is a Torture Device for God Particle

One week ago, whistleblower Professor Stephen Hawking bravely stepped forward and warned that scientists are torturing a particle of God.

For reasons unknown, the scientists discovered a way to capture a particle of God in what is known as the CERN Large Hadron Collidor that is secretly located somewhere in Switzerland. Instead of worshiping the particle as something sacred and letting it go free, the scientists are trying to rip it apart and figure out how to harness all of its energies.

:lol:

I'm not sure all the commenters grasp the concept of satire. The idea of Prof Hawking stepping forward should be a clue. ;)

Bloody Zombies have take over the LHC again.
 
Collider hopes for a 'super' restart
A senior researcher at the Large Hadron Collider says a new particle could be detected this year that is even more exciting than the Higgs boson.

The accelerator is due to come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy.

Looking at the picture I'm imagining what is being said. "Many thanks to our 2 volunteers Alice And Bob.2 *2 people wearing black helmets wave their hands* " We'll be starting to accelerate them both on Wednesday and hope to have them up to speed by Friday."
 
So now the Higgs Boson is suddenly passé?
All that hype about 'God Particle' means diddly now?
 
And I just bought ten from a collectors shop! You mean to say my money was wasted?
 
15 February 2015 Last updated at 04:18
Collider hopes for a 'super' restart
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent, San Jose

_81018135_75934970.jpg

The LHC has been shut down since 2013 for a programme of upgrades and repairs

A senior researcher at the Large Hadron Collider says a new particle could be detected this year that is even more exciting than the Higgs boson.
The accelerator is due to come back online in March after an upgrade that has given it a big boost in energy.
This could force the first so-called supersymmetric particle to appear in the machine, with the most likely candidate being the gluino.
Its detection would give scientists direct pointers to "dark matter".

And that would be a big opening into some of the remaining mysteries of the universe.
"It could be as early as this year. Summer may be a bit hard but late summer maybe, if we're really lucky," said Prof Beate Heinemann, who is a spokeswoman for the Atlas experiment, one of the big particle detectors at the LHC.
"We hope that we're just now at this threshold that we're finding another world, like antimatter for instance. We found antimatter in the beginning of the last century. Maybe we'll find now [new?] supersymmetric matter."

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31476337

Here's one I prepared earlier - and forgot to post! :mad:
 
Back
Top