CERN: the most famous particle accelerator sets out to conquer physics

On Friday April 22, two streams of protons streaked through the endless pipes of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), announced the CERN in a press release spotted by the BBC. An event that marks the return to business of this famous particle accelerator based in Geneva. This instrument has been out of service for three years now. A delay that allowed him to benefit from long maintenance work and several major updates; now awakened from its torpor, it resumes its revolutionary work with the promise of new first-rate scientific discoveries.

This time, the machine left for more than four years of high voltage experiments. And the CERN researchers hope that the great efforts made during these three frustrating years, because scientifically sterile, will pay off. “Our ability to detect, collect and analyze data will be two to three times better“, explains Marcella Bona, physicist from Queen Mary University of London interviewed by the BBC.

A facility at the service of fundamental physics

As its name suggests, the Large Hadron Collider is an accelerator, or more precisely a particle collider. Physically, it mainly takes the form of a long tunnel lined with sensors in which researchers make particles travel at an incredible speed thanks to magnetic fields. They then seek to make them collide to trigger a vast nanometric upheaval.

Very briefly, when two particles come into contact under these conditions, they fly apart in a superheated cloud of so-called subatomic particles; it is through the study of the latter that the LHC physicists hope to understand the interactions of matter at the most fundamental level.

This new version of the LHC will allow CERN to obtain more collisions, and by extension more data on lots of phenomena that are still very mysterious… or even still totally unknown.”During a collision, fundamentally different particles are seen to emerge which apparently have nothing to do with the basic objects.“, explains Boston University. “It’s like seeing a chair and a sink emerge from a collision between two cars“, explains the institution in the video below.

The aim is thus to answer some of the most important questions in all of physics. In particular, the LHC is one of the most interesting tools for exploring the limits of the Standard Model of particle physics. This is an extremely important element that is one of the pillars of our scientific theory, because it allows us to describe the behavior of matter on a very small scale with formidable precision.

A nanometer cannon aimed at the standard model of physics

The problem is that although it works extremely well in observable reality, the Standard Model is still not perfect. His main breaking point is that he fails to agree with the general relativity defined by Albert Einstein (see our article here).

If the latter is perfectly conclusive on our scale, it no longer works at all on the subatomic scale. In particular, no element of the standard model makes it possible to explain the gravitational forces so well described by general relativity. Conversely, general relativity remains unanswered when talking about subatomic phenomena.

The objective is therefore to fill this yawning gap in order to arrive at a unified and global theory called “of the Whole”. This was the main objective of the famous Albert Einstein, and he chased after it throughout his career, without result. Several generations of new researchers have taken up the torch and are following in the footsteps of the master to try to discover them, with ever more advanced instruments such as those at CERN.

To date, they are undoubtedly among those who have contributed the most to this work. And this is not just an abstract thought experiment: this question has very concrete implications. The missing pieces of the universe puzzle presumably lurk in these still very mysterious breaking points. Recently, other researchers at CERN have also made an astonishing discovery which could well have considerable implications at this level (see our article).

Four years on the front line

By torturing the standard model in this way, the researchers intend to make it confess; for example, they hope to find new types of particles or new interactions between them. They could also clarify their understanding of still very abstract concepts such as the famous dark matter.

Finally, researchers will also continue to focus on the famous Higgs Boson. This is a mysterious particle that has been beating physics for many, many years; it was formally identified on June 4, 2012, almost ten years ago, thanks to the now nobelized work of Peter W. Higgs and François Englert.

By symbolism, many institutions would probably have waited for the date of this anniversary to restart the machine. But at CERN, there is no question of hanging around; every minute of LHC experimentation is invaluable, and observations are therefore starting again with renewed vigor for a period of four years.

We therefore give you an appointment on this date to take stock of this third round of experimentation… unless a new sensational discovery hits the headlines in the meantime. The standard model of particle physics has better watch out!