London: The stage is now set for data to be collected from collisions within the Large Hadron Collider’s giant detectors.
Scientists are waiting for the first new data to start flowing from the underground particle smasher, as the LHC begins its first “physics collisions” in two years.
The vast machine will clatter proton beams together at much higher energies than it achieved during its first operational period from 2010-2013, which should allow physicists to hunt for signs of new scientific phenomena.
Situated 100m beneath tranquil countryside on the Franco-Swiss border, the particle smasher operated by Cern has already carried out test collisions at the energy of 13 trillion electron volts (TeV), up from a high mark of 8 TeV achieved during the machine’s first run.
Researcher Dan Tovey of the University of Sheffield said that this period is really when they start to get the first significant data from the 13 TeV collisions. It is a bit like turning on a tap, but this is just the start.
Tovey added over the next few months, the rate of collisions will increase very significantly, so that by the middle of the summer they’ll have sufficient data that they can begin breaking new ground in their searches for new physics beyond the Standard Model that they couldn’t probe with the previous run of LHC.
The proton beams in the LHC contain as much energy as a speeding train, but each beam contains billions of particles, only a fraction of which will collide at the crossing points.
The energy of two protons colliding in the LHC is equivalent to that of a dozen mosquitoes in flight, but the extraordinary thing about this machine is that the energy is packed into a minuscule space, billions of times smaller than the humble mozzie.
In this way, the collider is able to recreate energy densities close to those that existed just after the Big Bang, allowing physicists to probe the very fabric of the cosmos.