CERN is about to launch the Large Hadron Collider in a third round: NPR

Ten years ago, scientists were able to discover Higgs boson And help in understanding the universe using the Large Hadron Collider. They did so again in 2018, unlocking new insights into protons.

Now, with a new set of questions, they plan to restart the particle accelerator this month perhaps to better understand cosmic unknowns like dark matter.

“This is a particle that answered some questions for us and gave many others,” Dr. Sarah Demers, a professor of physics at Yale University, told NPR.

The Higgs boson was first observed when scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, spin and smash particles together near the speed of light. They did this using the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator – the Large Hadron Collider.

Since 1964, physicists have assumed that this particle exists, but it took nearly 50 years to find proof.

Scientists believe that the Higgs field was It’s a tenth of a billionth of a second After and without the Big Bang, Stars, planets and life would never have appeared.

The evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson was a milestone in fundamental physics, and Dr. François Englert and Dr. Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Despite the scientific achievement, the work in understanding how the universe works is far from over.

The collider completed a second test round in 2018 that gave new insights into the structures of protons and how the Higgs boson decays.

And after more than three years of maintenance and upgrades, the collider will launch again on Tuesday — this time tripling data, keeping intense beams for longer and enabling more studies overall.

“There has to be more because we can’t explain a lot of the things around,” said Demers, who also works at CERN on the third round. “Something is really missing, and in a really big way, we’re talking about 96 percent of the universe is really big.”

What Demers is referring to is dark matter, an invisible substance believed to exist from observations of the universe, and dark energy, which fuels the accelerating expansion of the universe. She hopes that the upcoming race will yield insights into the elusive but overwhelming part of our universe.

In a press release, CERN BooksFinding answers to these and other intriguing questions will not only advance our understanding of the universe on the smallest scales, but may also help unlock some of the biggest mysteries of the universe as a whole, such as how the path came to be and what its ultimate fate might be.

The third run is expected to continue over the next four years, and scientists have already begun work on Run 4, set to begin in 2030.