Thursday, June 9, 2022

The five greatest puzzles to be solved by the Large Hadron Collider

 The world's largest particle accelerator, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), starts working again. The device, which is the largest man-made source of the magnetic field, will seek answers to basic questions about the nature of the world around us.

Back in 2012, physicists at the CERN institute in Geneva, where the structure is located, stated that they had managed to capture a trace of the existence of the character boson that is supposed to give mass. Some have called it "the divine particle." It was, however, a somewhat forced interpretation of the data collected as part of the work of the two detectors ATLAS and CME. Physicists then stated that they had reached the limit of the LHC's capabilities and decided to add superconductors and rebuild the circuits to achieve much higher collision energies.

When the main goal of the LHC's existence - finding a characterizing boson - was achieved, many feared that funding would run out of further research. However, it turned out differently, the money was found, and new goals were set for scientists, including understanding what dark matter is, the existence of which results from mathematical rules.

Astrophysicists argue that as much as 75% of the matter in the universe is invisible, but it must exist because without it there would not be enough gravity to keep the stars in orbits around the galactic center. If scientists are right, dark matter particles can be obtained as a result of the decay of the Higgs boson. With the collision energy almost doubled - the LHC was retrofitted from 8 TeV to 14 TeV - it can be possible to observe the formation of dark matter.

Research at the LHC can also help you understand the nature of a phenomenon called spontaneous symmetry breaking - SUSY. In great simplification, each of the elementary particles should be accompanied by its counterpart. For example, an electron that is a fermion should have a counterpart called a selection, which will be a boson. Broken symmetries become visible only at high energies.

Experts suspect that there was no spontaneous symmetry breakage in the early stages of the universe. This is why scientists plan to recreate the cosmic conditions of the early universe. One that existed within a billionth of a second after the hypothetical Big Bang. According to their theories, the cosmos was very dense and hot back then, but these are nothing but unsupported assumptions. These experiments will start in May this year.

By the way, scientists believe that it will be possible to continue the research of antimatter, which is the opposite of matter. Scientists believe that immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was made up of an equal amount of matter and antimatter. Since we live in the material world, scientists believe that there must have been some subtle differences in the properties of matter and antimatter, however, antimatter had to be somehow destroyed almost immediately.

CERN has already created small amounts of antimatter. In one of the experiments, researchers collected 309 Anti-Hydrogen atoms, but the antimatter was destroyed in a flash of energy that occurred upon contact with matter. The antihydrogen disappeared after about 17 minutes. Restarting the LHC will allow scientists to continue studying the unique properties of antimatter.

In addition, there are promises to study gravity and the additional dimensions of space-time. Scientists want to understand why gravity is so different from other natural forces. It is possible that we do not fully feel its effects because it is being distributed in other dimensions. Scientists can also learn more about these additional dimensions by observing particles that can only exist within them. Perhaps, instead of supersymmetry, a new theory using the multiverse issue will be proposed, or something similar.

Opponents of the work of the Large Hadron Collider have always pointed out that operating with such high collision energies is dangerous and may even create black holes, i.e. creatures whose gravity is so strong that even light cannot leave it. More than once it has been threatened that an artificially created black hole may end our existence.

Scientists suggest, however, that this is an exaggeration, and that microscopic black holes that are smaller than an atom could exist next to us, as long as there are these additional hidden dimensions as well. So far, no microscopic black holes have been created at the LHC, but even if they do, according to scientists, they should evaporate in 10-27 seconds and then decay into conventional or supersymmetric particles.

Even if CERN's artificial black holes do not endanger our existence, there is another theoretical risk due to high-energy collisions - quantum singularities, also known as freaks. These are hypothetical, subatomic pieces of strange matter, almost entirely composed of strange quarks, which, according to the theory, become more stable as energy grows. One theory suggests that such a freak has the potential to destroy Earth in one-thousandth of a second. But experts at CERN say it's unlikely.

There are also conspiracy theories that any inclusion of the LHC results in a large increase in seismic activity worldwide. This is to be the result of the large magnetic field emitted from the device, which interacts naturally with the Earth's magnetic field. This leads to disturbances that spread like a butterfly effect, causing changes in rock stresses and, consequently, seismic phenomena.

The modernization of the Large Hadron Collider has already been completed and the device will soon start working with a record collision energy of 13 TeV. The target energy - 14 TeV - will not be achieved until some time later. Then it will be the peak of the 27 km ring located near Geneva. According to the plan, the LHC will start accelerating protons on March 23, 2015. We will see soon whether physicists will discover more of nature's secrets and whether operating with such high energies is really as safe as they provide.

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