Thursday 19 November 2009
Scientists hold their breath as LHC prepares to fire up ☀
The machine, which occupies a 27km tunnel 100m beneath the French-Swiss border, will probe some of the deepest mysteries of the universe by crashing subatomic particles into one another at close to the speed of light.
The collisions are expected to reveal tantalising signs of new physics that could include extra dimensions of space and “supersymmetry”, a theory that calls for every particle in the universe to have an invisible partner.
Scientists also hope the machine will finally discover the elusive Higgs boson, aka the God particle, which imbues other particles with mass. It may also expose the nature of dark matter, a mysterious, invisible material that stretches across the cosmos and collects around galaxies.
