This spring the famous Large Hadron Collider will begin its research again. For the past two years its operation has been paused, and throughout that time engineers were working on a substantial improvement of the accelerator. The theoretical scientists had an excellent opportunity in the meantime to take various training courses. Now the modernisation is practically complete: new detectors have been added to the collider and its speed has been increased.
This matter is one of the most amazing and exciting puzzles facing modern science.
So far this is merely a hypothesis, and the power of a facility such as the Large Hadron Collider is needed to prove it experimentally.
The Standard Model of elementary particle physics, which has stood until now, cannot explain many of the effects that astronomers observe, which means that it is time to refine it. This is what Dr Petersson and his colleagues tried to do, proposing a new model that includes, among other things, particles of dark matter, whose existence has yet to be proved.
Like other elementary particles, Higgs particles have a set of properties. According to the new theory they can decay, producing:
What research the scientists intend to carry out
The first task for the near future will be to prove the theory of the Swedish physicist Petersson. He suggested that the famous Higgs boson, whose existence was convincingly proved a few years ago in experiments at the LHC, can, when it decays, produce not only elementary particles that the sensors pick up but also particles of dark matter.This matter is one of the most amazing and exciting puzzles facing modern science.
So far this is merely a hypothesis, and the power of a facility such as the Large Hadron Collider is needed to prove it experimentally.
What the theory consists of
Cosmologists have long been convinced that our Universe consists of dark matter by almost 85%. But, alas, it cannot be measured by any instrument, and scientists were able to guess at its existence only by observing the behaviour of galaxies.The Standard Model of elementary particle physics, which has stood until now, cannot explain many of the effects that astronomers observe, which means that it is time to refine it. This is what Dr Petersson and his colleagues tried to do, proposing a new model that includes, among other things, particles of dark matter, whose existence has yet to be proved.
Like other elementary particles, Higgs particles have a set of properties. According to the new theory they can decay, producing:
- photons, or particles of light;
- particles of invisible dark matter.