What do you know about the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, which will be fully operational on Tuesday

It is poised to revolutionize our knowledge of the universe once again. CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is scheduled to reach full capacity on Tuesday, July 5. After three years of shutdown for maintenance and improvement, it restarted on April 22. Franceinfo presents the world’s largest particle accelerator, this temple to the study of the infinity of filigree.

It is 27 km long and located at a depth of 100 meters underground

The LHC is a 27 km diameter ring buried 100 meters underground, on the border between France and Switzerland, not far from Geneva. If the device is buried this deep, it will be “To avoid contamination of cosmic particles that can disturb experiments.”, as Cern demonstrates in this video demo of the LHCb experiment. Access to the particle accelerator is very safe: before using the elevator that connects it to the surface, the device scans the iris of visitors.

Why are such large instruments necessary to study the infinitesimal? In summarizing, explain it The Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies AuthorityEgyptian Chefs Association), particles behave like waves or waves. According to quantum mechanics, energy is inversely proportional to wavelength. This is why working at short wavelengths requires so much power.

It’s a (very) violent crash scene.

The LHC is a collider. Inside, physicists push protons, particles found in the nuclei of atoms. In the ring, two beams of protons rotate, each one in one direction. They move at close to the speed of light, collide and explode. And the more violent these collisions are, the more they can break apart the particles and help scientists determine their components and their interactions.

After three years of operation, the LHC will reach its full collision force of 13.6 billion electronvolts (TeV). This is unprecedented, notes Laurent Vacavant, deputy scientific director at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics. But what does it correspond to? “It’s very difficult to explain because these are really units of power that are specific to our field. They are very small energies”admits. “To give an idea, we often compare this energy to that which a mosquito must expend to stay in the atmosphere. However, in the Large Hadron Collider, this energy is maximally concentrated in the collision of two protons.”He says.

“Because the protons are so small, this makes for an enormous concentration of energy.”

Laurent Vacvant

in franceinfo

With this unprecedented power, physicists hope to get even more “Interesting collisions” and the “rare events” With the possibility of the formation of new or previously unobserved particles, according to Laurent Vacafant.

Then, the detectors of several experiments (Atlas, CMS, ALICE, LHCb) distributed over a distance of 27 kilometers from the ring are responsible for capturing and recording the collisions. The CMS, for example, acts as a giant camera that takes 3D images of collisions. “We aim to achieve a rate of 1.6 billion proton-proton collisions per second for the Atlas and CMS experiments.”said Mike Lamont, director of accelerators and technology at CERN.

It has really revolutionized physics

Thanks to the LHC, in 2012, Fabiola Gianotti, then the coordinator of the CMS experiment, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. This revolutionized physics, confirming the predictions of the researchers who, nearly 50 years ago, made it a centerpiece of the Standard Model of particle physics (SM).

>> Seven questions about the Higgs boson

“The Higgs boson is related to some of the most profound questions in fundamental physics, from the structure and shape of the universe to how other particles organize themselves.”explained the person who is now the general manager of CERN.

But the Higgs boson remains a mystery. Is it a fundamental particle or a compound?asks Joachim Menisch, CERN’s director of research and computation, an assemblage of several still-unidentified particles. “Is this the only Higgs particle out there, or are there other particles?” continued.

It can help to learn more about dark matter

“Discovering the Higgs boson is like finding a needle in a haystack”, notes Laurent Vacavant. It took about 1.2 billion proton collisions to find it. The new operating phase of the LHC should allow this number to be doubled by twenty. “A significant increase opens the way to new discoveries”Judge Mike Lamont.

In addition to the Higgs boson, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have already detected more than 60 composite particles predicted by the Standard Model. With this new phase of operation of the particle accelerator, scientists are hoping for new discoveries. Laurent Vacafant mentions dark matter in particular. This illusory and mysterious substance will consist of strange, high-mass particles. According to certain hypotheses, there can be five to seven times more dark matter in the universe than there is visible matter. This means that the matter we know (which is made up of atoms) will represent less than 20% of all the matter that makes up the universe.

This dark matter, which has not been detected and observed before, is an important key to understanding the motions of large structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters. Getting rid of them would be a huge discovery, and tracking them down is a priority for researchers everywhere. “Dark matter, we know is a particle that practically does not interactexposes Laurent Vacavant. In some embodiments there is a particle [hypothétique] It is called Neutralino. As its name suggests, it is a very neutral particle, and it is difficult to see. And depending on the mass of this neutrino, it can have all the properties of dark matter. “, he explains. The coming years promise to be as exciting as they are at LHC.