This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this folio. Terms of use.

Inside the ATLAS detector

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the near complex device always built by humanity, and it's immune us to explore previously unknowable realms of physics. However, in that location are still some missing pieces to the puzzle. Scientists promise that a comparatively minor new instrument well-nigh the LHC could spot those missing pieces — missing particles, actually. The Massive Timing Hodoscope for Ultra Stable Neutral Particles is still just in the planning stages, but it could eventually spot devious particles escaping from the LHC.

The LHC began operating in 2008, with one of its primary goals to identify the Higgs Boson. This elementary particle, start hypothesized past Peter Higgs in 1964, is a vital slice of the so-chosen "standard model" of physics. The Higgs has to exercise with why other particles accept mass. Information from the LHC has proven the Higgs Boson exists, but at that place'southward still a trouble with the Higgs: information technology'southward not as massive as quantum mechanics predicts. And then, physicists demand to business relationship for that missing mass. That's where the new project could close the gap.

The Massive Timing Hodoscope for Ultra Stable Neutral Particles (which goes by the inaccurate but much simpler nickname MATHUSLA) volition look for particles the LHC misses because they're too stable. The LHC's detectors, like the ATLAS instrument seen above, scan for the decay of exotic particles when protons smash together in the collider. These are normally listen-bogglingly short-lived, but researchers are beginning to suspect some of them might exist more stable than expected. That's why MATHUSLA is looking for "ultra-stable" particles. It's right in the proper name.

LHC particles

MATHUSLA would essentially be a warehouse total of particle detectors stacked 20 meters alpine at ground level to a higher place the LHC. Particles that streak away from the LHC without showing up in the data could announced in MATHUSLA's detectors a split second afterward. A thick granite flooring would be necessary to filter out the shower of less interesting particles, but anything left would exist worth looking at more than closely.

Scientists have good reason to suspect in that location are missing particles for MATHUSLA to see. Throughout history, the corrections introduced in physics to business relationship for similar holes have turned out to be forces and particles nosotros just didn't know almost at the time. Edifice MATHUSLA wouldn't even exist that expensive compared with the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider. MATHUSLA's designers hope CERN, which operates the LHC, will step in and comprehend the $50 million cost to add together MATHUSLA project.

Now read: What is the Higgs Boson?