The world's most powerful proton smasher is preparing for its biggest run yet which scientists hope will uncover new particles that could dramatically change our understanding of the Universe. "We are exploring truly fundamental issues, and that's why this run is so exciting," physicist Paris Sphicas told AFP at Europe's physics lab, CERN, last week.
"Who knows what we will find." Late last year, before CERN shut down its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for a technical break, two separate teams of scientists said they had discovered anomalies that could possibly hint at the existence of a mysterious new particle. The discovery of a new particle could prove the existence of extra space-time dimensions, or explain the enigma of dark matter, scientists say.
The LHC, housed in a 27-kilometre (17-mile) tunnel straddling the French-Swiss border, has shaken up physics before. In 2012 it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson - the long-sought maker of mass - by crashing high-energy proton beams at velocities near the speed of light. A year later, two of the scientists who had in 1964 theorised the existence of the Higgs, also known as the God particle, earned the Nobel physics prize for the discovery.
The Higgs fits in with the so-called Standard Model - the mainstream theory of all the fundamental particles that make up matter and the forces that govern them. The LHC, he said, could unveil whole new dimensions, help explain dark matter and dark energy, of which we have no understanding but which together make up 95 percent of the universe.