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Credit: Maximilien Brice,
CERN
Explanation:
Why do objects have mass?
To help find out,
Europe's
CERN has built the
Large Hadron Collider
(LHC), the most powerful
particle accelerator
yet created by
humans.
This May, the
LHC is scheduled to start smashing protons
into each other with unprecedented impact speeds.
The LHC
will explore the leading explanation that mass arises from
ordinary particles slogging through an otherwise invisible but pervasive
field of
virtual Higgs particles.
Were high energy colliding particles to create real
Higgs bosons, the
Higgs mechanism
for mass creation may be bolstered.
LHC will also look for
micro black holes,
magnetic monopoles,
and explore the possibility that every type of
fundamental particle
we know about has a nearly invisible
supersymmetric counterpart.
The LHC@Home
project will allow anyone with a home computer to help
LHC scientists
search archived LHC data for these strange beasts.
Pictured above,
a person stands in front of the huge
ATLAS detector,
one of six detectors being attached to the
LHC.
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day