Scientists Turn Up the Juice in Search of the 'God Particle'
Swiss scientists have recently made the decision to turn up the juice on a quest to find what is known as the "God Particle" by increasing the energy on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to 8 trillion electron volts.
The Large Hadron Collider works as an atom smasher and is primarily used to find the Higgs boson that is also known as the "God particle" since it is thought to be responsible for giving mass to all things.
With the increase in energy, scientists will not only increase their chances of finding the particle, but will also break a power record set last year by increasing the juice by 14 percent.
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"By the time LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out the existence of a Standard Model Higgs," said CERN's Research Director Sergio Bertolucci in a statement.
"Either would be a major advance in our exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a new chapter in particle physics," he continued.
This decision was made shortly after an annual performance workshop last week in Chamonix and a report from the CERN Machine Advisory Committee. CERN, a lab located in Geneva has been working on finding the Higgs Boson by using the Large Hadron Collider for the past few years.
"When we started operating the LHC for physics in 2010, we chose the lowest safe beam energy consistent with the physics we wanted to do," said CERN's Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers.
"Two good years of operational experience with beam and many additional measurements made during 2011 give us the confidence to safely move up a notch, and thereby extend the physics reach of the experiments before we go into the LHC's first long shutdown," he added.
