World’s largest atom smasher LHC resumes operation to discover new particles

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has already led to the discovery of some bizarre particles. It is expected to do more in 2015 after a two-year break to allow its upgrade. The atom smasher’s most-storied discovery currently is the Higgs boson, which has also been dubbed ‘God particle”.

Searchers expect the improved LHC to discover more kinds of God particles. The powerful particle accelerator is also expected to lead to the discovery of new dimensions of reality, beyond the length, width and height that are already known to man. More importantly, scientists are hopeful that LHC will help with the unraveling of the mysteries of dark matter, which is said to make up most of the mass around us. However, very little is currently understood about dark matter.

Back in 2012, LHC led to the discovery of Higgs boson, a particle that has a mass that is about 130 times that of the proton. Higgs boson is responsible for the mass in all particles that have it. Such particles include electrons and protons. The discovery of Higgs boson remains the amazing work of LHC.

The LHC that will be resuming operations in 2015 will be much different from what existed back there in 2008 when the particle accelerator first went live. The new LHC will exhibit greater energy, which is double what it previously had. According to Gabriella Sciolla, a physicist at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, higher energy produces heavier particles.

Besides the improvement in energy at LHC, the facility remains the world’s largest particle collider boasting 16 miles in circumference. LHC accelerates particles almost at the speed of light, and it uses about 9,600 magnets. The largest magnet in LHC has got a weight of 35 tons and stretches about 50 feet long.

The return of LHC has generated a lot of excitement among the people, especially among scientists. There is a great anticipation that the large particle collider will continue to shed more light on the nature of dark matter. Researchers cannot wait for 2015 to seen LHC resume operation in a bigger way.