The mystery of dark matter, one of the biggest mysteries of the universe, may be solved tomorrow when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is operational again.
This matter makes up more than three-quarters of the matter in the universe, but scientists still don’t know what it is.
The capacity of the LHC, the world’s largest particle accelerator at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, has been upgraded for dark matter research.
Scientists at CERN had discovered the Higgs boson 10 years ago, which is considered one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century.
According to experts, without this particle and its associated field, nothing in the universe as we know it today would exist.
British particle physicist Dr. Clara Nellist is part of the team that will investigate dark matter.
Dr. Nellist was also at CERN when the Higgs boson was found.
“I wanted to witness the historic moment when the General Manager was going to announce that we had discovered the new particle. I slept in the hallway to find a place in the conference room. This discovery gives us the motivation to work on our next big breakthrough,” he says.
The invention in 2012 had a great impact all over the world.
Dr. “The Higgs boson is a really special particle. It’s related to other fundamental particles gaining mass. Particles gain mass when they enter the Higgs field, and we can prove the existence of the Higgs field in our experiments with the Higgs boson,” Nellist says.
The Higgs field is an energy field. It gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.
The Higgs boson is also known as the “God particle”. Because the process of gaining mass is likened to the Big Bang, which created the current universe.
better and stronger
Dr. “The last few years have been really exciting, because we’ve done some repairs and expanded our experiments with our colliders,” says Nellist.
Upgrading the Large Hadron Collider means the LHC is more powerful and more parts collide. More collisions mean more data to analyze.
The LHC expends a tremendous amount of energy. CERN consumes enough electricity to meet the needs of a small city or 300 thousand households per year.
Some of this energy is used to accelerate protons to near the speed of light. When protons collide at this speed, they break up into even smaller pieces.
Dr. “We’ve made two major upgrades at the LHC. We’ve moved to a higher energy. That’s a record collision energy. We’ve improved the angle of intersection where the protons collide in the detectors’ coverage area. This increases the likelihood of the two protons interacting. This increases our chances of getting more data,” Nellist said. raises.” says.
The mystery of dark matter
Scientists at CERN hope all this data will help unravel the mystery of dark matter.
Dr. “Dark matter makes up 80-85 percent of the matter in our universe. It’s called dark matter because it doesn’t interact with light. That’s why we can’t see it. More interestingly, we don’t know what it is,” says Nellist.
So far, scientists have been able to observe only indirect evidence of dark matter. Dark matter particles could not be detected directly.
There are different theories as to what this particle is.
One of the most popular theories among scientists is that it is the WIMP, or Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.
Dr. “It’s still a big mystery. We’re trying to see if this can be created in experiments,” says Nellist.