Large particle accelerator is about to reach unprecedented energy levels

In a press conference last week, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is preparing for its third run, lasting almost four years, with a speed of nearly four years. record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts (eV).

The Large Hadron Collider beneath the Swiss-French border.

It would send two beams of protons - particles in the nucleus of an atom - in opposite directions, at nearly the speed of light, around a 27-kilometer-long circular tube buried 100 meters inside. under the Swiss-French border.

The results of the collisions will be recorded and analyzed by thousands of scientists as part of a series of experiments, including ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb, to enhance dark matter exploration. , dark energy, and uncover other fundamental mysteries of the universe.

"We aim to generate 1.6 billion proton-proton collisions per second," Mike Lamont, CERN's head of accelerators and technology, told AFP.

At this point, the surrounding proton beam will be narrowed to less than 10 microns to increase the collision speed. For comparison, a human hair is about 70 microns thick. The new energy speed will allow CERN to further investigate the Higgs boson - a type of elementary particle in the standard model of physics that was first detected by the LHC on July 4, 2012.

CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti, who first announced the discovery of the Higgs boson a decade ago, stressed that the particle is involved in some of the most profound open questions in fundamental physics today.

The new LHC will return to trial operation from April 2022 after a three-year pause for upgrades.

Compared with the first run when the LHC detected the Higgs, the new run will have 20 times more collisions. "This is a significant increase, paving the way for new discoveries," Lamont said.

Joachim Mnich, CERN's head of research and computing, adds that much remains to be learned about bosons.

Past experiments have determined the mass of the Higgs boson, but Gian Giudice, head of CERN's theoretical physics department, says observing the particles is only part of the job.

"Particle physics is not simply about answering the how, our goal is to understand why," added Giudice.

After this third run, the LHC will take a short break before returning to service in 2029 with a new name of the High Brightness LHC Accelerator, increasing the number of detectable events to humans. No. 10.

In addition, the scientists are planning to develop a new machine called the Future Circle Accelerator - a 100 km long circular pipe with a huge energy level of up to 100 trillion eV.