When you purchase through links on our site , we may clear an affiliate commissioning . Here ’s how it work .
The world ’s biggest atom smasher could be getting an upgrade .
TheLarge Hadron Collider(LHC ) , situated at the CERN laboratory on the Swiss - Gallic boundary line , was build over a decade ago with two goals in mind . First , to establish the existence of theHiggs boson , the cornerstone particle of the Standard Model of particle physic , foreshadow all the agency back in the sixties ; And secondly , to find any new particles , especially ones that could validate one of the many competitors to physical theory beyond theStandard Model .
A photo of the ATLAS particle detector at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
But while the LHC has show a success when it come to the Higgs , whose existence was affirm by CERN scientist in 2012 , the atom smasher has also been a failure when it amount to newfangled particles . Despite more than a decade of searching , the collider has found no traces of any physic beyond the Standard Model .
fail to find new particles is not exactly a high-risk thing . The continuous damaging results have disproven many alternative manakin , which means that at least scientist know which idea are bad and no longer deserving working on . But a lack of plus result has also left modernparticle physicsin the night , with little to no clues about which hypothetical ideas might still be worth pursue .
The LHC , as powerful as it is at seeing subatomic particles , does have a blind spot . It was designed with certain supposed particles in mind , peculiarly one that have galvanic charge and do n’t have long lifespans . And there is a class of suppositional particles , known as long - live on neutral particles , that can slip by LHC ’s two main detectors without posting . So the giant auto may have been revealing new physics every single twenty-four hours , but those particle were undetectable .
An illustration showing the proposed location for the MATHUSLA detector at CERN.
Related : scientist exact to find ' first observational evidence supporting string possibility , ' which could finally reveal the nature of glum energy
This fact was not lost on the LHC ’s original designers . Soon after the collider began operations , a team forgather to design an impart - on detector to look for long - live particles . That detector , known as MATHUSLA — named for Methuselah , the Biblical character who supposedly subsist for over 900 years , and stand for MAssive Timing Hodoscope for Ultra - Stable neutraL pArticles — is in its concluding invention stages , according to a reportby more than 30 scientists involved in the labor , put out March 26 to the preprint server arXiv .
If financing stays on track , the team hopes to begin construction this year .
Waking MATHUSLA
MATHUSLA will lie of a elephantine chamber 130 feet ( 40 m ) across , filled with nothing but air and surrounded by bank of detectors . It would be placed about 330 feet ( 100 meter ) away from the principal collider beam , with dirt and stone filling the blank between .
In particle physics , " long - survive " is a relative term . In this case , many hypothetical particles have lifespan of around a few hundred nanosecond — an eternity compared to the vast majority of particles that are presently being studied at the LHC .
— ' hard ' dark matter would rip our savvy of the population aside , new inquiry suggests
— The Higgs mote could unwrap physics throughout the universe . Here ’s why it has n’t .
— The 10 biggest science experiments on Earth
If MATHULSA work , the add - on detector will waitress for one of these long - live particles to make its way into the main chamber . There it will dilapidate into a rain shower of other particles , and banks of detector will wait for their telling glow .
Long - populate particles could give physicists insights into the detailed nature of the Higgs boson , possible companion to the Higgs and explanations as to why the force of gravitational force is so weak . They may even facilitate let on the identity ofdark matter — the mysterious substance that is predicted to make up about 85 % of all issue in the universe and yet remains mostly unknown to science .
With such exciting results potentially within reach , let ’s just hope that we wo n’t have to wait 900 years for MATHUSLA to be build .
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again , you will then be prompt to enter your display name .
