Large Hadron Collider Restarts, Physicists Elated
The ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider housed at CERN near Geneva. ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Starting in late 2009, the ATLAS detector will search for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy. ATLAS will learn about the basic forces that have shaped our Universe since the beginning of time and that will determine its fate. (Photo courtesy of CERN)
Particle beams are once again zooming around the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, where a team of University of Massachusetts Amherst physicists run experiments to collect data on fundamental atomic particles. The work could reveal new states of matter and unveil the secrets of dark matter.
A clockwise circulating beam was established in the LHC’s 17-mile-diameter ring on Nov. 20, ending more than a year of repairs to the huge underground laboratory. It is now ready to begin creating high-energy particle collisions that may yield insights into the nature of the physical universe, scientists say. The accelerator is a tool used to study extremely small structures within an atom’s nucleus, as well as interactions between them.
UMass Amherst physicist Stephane Willocq and colleagues in the campus’ High Energy Physics group are involved in the ATLAS experiment, one of the two largest experiments ongoing at the LHC with more than 2,000 physicists collaborating. ATLAS stands for A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS.
Willocq says with the LHC back on line, the ATLAS detector can now begin searching for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons of extraordinarily high energy. “ATLAS will learn about the basic forces that have shaped our Universe since the beginning of time; forces which will determine its fate. Among the possible unknowns are the origin of mass, extra dimensions of space, unification of fundamental forces, and evidence for dark matter candidates in the Universe.” (more…)
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