Scientists at Europe’s center for physical research this week will activate the 27-kilometer Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine that detects the Higgs boson, after being shut down for maintenance and lift due to delay due to COVID-19.
Restarting the collider is a complicated procedure and researchers at CERN The center has champagne on hand if all goes well, ready to join a row of bottles in the control room celebrating milestones including the discovery of the elusive subatomic particle a decade ago.
“It’s not about turning on a button,” Rende Steerenberg, in charge of control room operations, told Reuters. “This comes with a certain sense of tension, nervousness.”
Potential pitfalls include obstacle detection; shrinkage of the material due to a temperature change of almost 300 degrees; and difficulties with thousands of magnets that help keep billions of particles in a tight beam as they orbit the collision tunnel beneath the Swiss-French border.
Steerenberg said the system must act “like an orchestra.”
“In order for the beam to go around, all of these magnets have to do the right thing and do the right thing at the right time,” he said.
The series of LHC collisions observed at CERN between 2010-2013 have yielded evidence for the existence of the long-sought Higgs boson, which, along with its binding energy field, is thought to be important. for the formation of the universe after the Big Bang 13.7. billion years ago.
But there is still much to be discovered.
Physicists hope the resumption of collisions will help them search for so-called “dark matter” beyond the visible universe. Dark matter is said to be five times more common than normal matter but does not absorb, reflect or emit light. Searches so far have been empty-handed.
“We’re going to drastically increase the number of collisions, and so the probability of new detection will also increase,” Steerenberg said, adding that the collider will stay active until it is shut down again from 2025-2027.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
