Table of Contents
What particles has the LHC discovered?
The LHC has now discovered 59 new hadrons. These include the tetraquarks most recently discovered, but also new mesons and baryons. All these new particles contain heavy quarks such as “charm” and “bottom”. These hadrons are interesting to study.
Can the LHC produce dark matter?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is renowned for the hunt for and discovery of the Higgs boson, but in the 10 years since the machine collided protons at an energy higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator, researchers have been using it to try to hunt down an equally exciting particle: the hypothetical …
Does the LHC create matter?
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) plays with Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy – in the form of electromagnetic waves.
Is there a Higgs boson in LHC data?
At CERN on 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations present evidence in the LHC data for a particle consistent with a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism proposed in the 1960s to give mass to the W, Z and other particles. (Image: Maximilien Brice/Laurent Egli/CERN)
What experiments have observed the Higgs boson?
A problem for many years has been that no experiment has observed the Higgs boson to confirm the theory. On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had each observed a new particle in the mass region around 125 GeV.
What happens to particles that do not interact with the Higgs field?
Particles like the photon that do not interact with it are left with no mass at all. Like all fundamental fields, the Higgs field has an associated particle – the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is the visible manifestation of the Higgs field, rather like a wave at the surface of the sea.
Can the Higgs boson be switched off?
But the Higgs field, with its constant non-zero value, cannot be switched on or off like the electromagnetic field. Scientists had only one option to prove it exists: create – and observe – the Higgs boson.