New collider promises to transform physics

Phys­ics is poised to en­ter un­known ter­ri­to­ry with the startup of a mas­sive new par­t­i­cle smash­er—the Large Had­ron Col­lid­er—in Eu­rope, sci­en­tists say. The first beam of pro­tons, fun­da­men­tal com­po­nents of atoms, is sched­uled to start speed­ing through the ma­chine Sept. 10.

A par­t­i­cle col­lider has a sim­ple bas­ic pur­pose: to smash to­geth­er atoms or their part­s—the so-called fun­da­men­tal par­t­i­cles of na­ture—to find out what’s in­side them.

The re­sults are of­ten sur­pris­ing and seem­ingly il­log­i­cal, but have re­vealed plen­ti­ful in­sights in­to na­ture over dec­ades. Phys­i­cists are hop­ing for more an­swers from larg­er, stronger col­liders.

The Large Had­ron Col­lider, or LHC, would test hotly de­bat­ed the­o­ries as it pro­duces moun­tains of da­ta.

Po­ten­tial break­throughs in­clude an ex­plana­t­ion of what cre­ates mass and what is the mys­te­ri­ous “dark mat­ter” that makes up most of the mass in the uni­ver­se, phys­i­cists say. More ex­ot­ic pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clude ev­i­dence for new forc­es of na­ture or hid­den ex­tra di­men­sions of space and time.


Source: http://www.world-science.net/othernews/080821_collider