University waits with baited breath for atom smasher results

Large Hadron Collider: The world's largest experiment into the fundamental forces of nature

Scientists at Bristol University are hoping some of the first results from the successful firing of The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a massive underground particle accelerator, will be made here in the city.

Yesterday, the world’s largest experiment into the fundamental forces of nature began in Switzerland, when two beams of sub-atomic particles were smashed together at three times the energy levels of any previous atom smasher — and without a sound.

“It’s a great day to be a particle physicist,”  said Rolf Heuer, head of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) in Geneva. “A lot of people have waited a long time for this moment, but their patience and dedication is starting to pay dividends.”

The LHC has been built in a tunnel 27km long and scientists believe it will take mankind one step close to answering some of the most fundamental questions about the Universe.

The sense of anticipation at the University of Bristol is huge and comes after more than twenty years’ work on the design, construction and commissioning of the LHC’s detectors.

The detectors are similar to vast digital cameras and can record the results of particle collisions up to 40million times per second. The Bristol team has contributed new sensors that can precisely measure the collision fragments, vital for the discovery of the missing Higgs boson particle.

The collisions of minute particles — protons — will be at the highest energy ever achieved in a particle accelerator — 7 TeV (1 TeV = a million, million electronvolts).

“The experiments at the LHC are the most challenging we’ve ever attempted, and the results could revolutionise our understanding of nature”, said Professor Greg Heath, who works on the CMS project. “The Bristol University team also has a key role in interpreting the data and some of the first discoveries could be made in Bristol.”

The experiments will recreate conditions that existed just a billionth of a second after the Big Bang and seek answers to some of the deepest mysteries of the origins and workings of the Universe

Professor Nick Brook who works on the LHC experiment explained: “Over the next two years we will investigate how and why does the Universe exist? Can we identify the unknown particle that makes up over 90% of the Universe? Can we unlock the mystery of anti-matter — why do we live in a world of just matter?”

Once 7 TeV collisions have been established, the plan is to run the LHC continuously for a period of 18-24 months, with a short technical stop at the end of 2010. This will bring enough data across all the potential discovery areas to firmly establish the LHC as the world’s foremost facility for high-energy particle physics.