- Test one, test two. One, two.
"I said a hip hop, the
hippie, to the hip, hip hop
"you don't stop rock it
to the bang bang boogie
"say, up jump the boogie, to the rhythm
"of the boogie, the beat." We good?
(synth music)
- By the early 20th
century physicists seem
to have the universe
pretty much figured out
in an understanding of the universe
called the standard model.
There was just one,
little, nagging problem.
How to explain radioactivity.
Addressing it sparked
a scientific revolution
that revealed the amazing
truth about little things.
Sometimes they contain universes.
And The Large Hadron
Collider might be the key
to finding these universes.
This 16.8 mile circumference ring
of super conducting magnets
slams particles together
at near-light speed in
an ultra-high vacuum
and it's shown us some fascinating stuff.
In our macroworld we assume
all particles have mass,
but in the microworld electroweak theory
predicts that special
particles called mediators
should have no mass at all,
but that's a problem
because some of them do.
Naughty little mediators.
In 1964 physicist Peter
Higgs and the team of
François Englert and Robert Brout
independently proposed a solution.
An unusual field that conveyed mass
based on how strongly
particles interacted with it.
If this Higgs field existed then it ought
to have a mediator
particle, a Higgs boson.
In 2013 physicists at The LHC confirmed
that they found a Higgs boson with a mass
of roughly 126 gigaelectronvolts or GeV.
That's the total mass
of about 126 protons.
Hadrons are subatomic particles
affected by the strong force,
and for a long time we
thought they came in six types
or flavors: up, down, strange,
charm, top and bottom.
Physicists divided hadrons
into two categories
based on ways that quarks made them.
Baryons were composed of three quarks
whereas mesons were formed
by quark, antiquark pairs,
but were these the only
possible combinations?
In 2003 researchers in Japan
found a strange particle,
X(3872), that appeared to
be made of a charm quark,
an anticharm and at
least two other quarks.
Well exploring the particle's
possible existence,
researchers found Z(4430), an
apparent four quark particle.
The LHC has since discovered evidence
for several such particles which break
or at least bend the established model
for quark arrangements.
When scientists
calibrating LHC instruments
tried ramming protons into lead nuclei,
they noted a surprising phenomenon.
The random paths that
the subatomic shrapnel
usually took had been replaced
by an apparent coordination.
One theory says that the impact
created an exotic state of matter
called quark-gluon plasma or QGP
which flowed like liquid and produced
coordinated particles as it cooled.
QGP is the densest form of matter outside
of a black hole and could
significantly effect
how scientists view conditions
immediately following the big bang.
Although most physicists favor this idea,
some have argued for a second explanation
involving a theoretical
field created by gluons,
the particles that mediate strongforce
and paste quarks and antiquarks
into protons and neutrons.
The hypothesis says gluons
zipping along at near-light speed
form fields that cause them to interact.
As weird as it might sound,
many physicists hoped
that The LHC wouldn't poke too many holes
in the standard model.
However The LHC has dealt repeated blows
to exotic physics while reconfirming
the standard model at every turn.
The results are not all in, and there's
an awful lot of data to analyze.
Nevertheless, chances don't look good
for disproving the standard model,
or maybe they do.
A 2013 report on B meson decay
showed the particles
decaying into a K meson,
AKA a kaon, and two muons,
which are particles similar to electrons,
and that's a pattern the
standard model didn't predict.
This odd pattern of decay
could offer the first glimpse
of the new physics so many
experts are looking for.
What do you think?
Is The LHC worth the
$10,000,000,000 price tag?
What will we learn next?
Let me know in the comments.
And for more information
check out our article,
"5 Discoveries Made By The LHC (So Far)"
at howstuffworks.com.
(beeping)
