The Science, Health, and Technology Room
Since we've been talking a lot about faith, science and reason...scientists have believed based on evidence that this particle exists, but they can't yet prove it.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will increase the energies of the bunches of subatomic particles called protons that it smashes together.
The boost should improve the collider's chances of discovering "new physics" and definitively confirming or denying the existence of Higgs boson particle.
The proton beams' energies will be increased by 14%, for a total collision energy of 8 trillion electron volts.
The announced increase will break the LHC's own high-energy record.
Since first switching on in 2008, operators at the LHC have cautiously increased the energy contained in each of the bunches of protons sent around the 27km collider, while lies beneath the Franco-Swiss border.
The decision to turn up the energy when the collider switches on again later this year was taken at a conference about the LHC in Chamonix in France.
"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 Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology at Cern, the laboratory that operates the LHC.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17025708
I remember when they turned this thing on there was concern it could open a black hole. No one really knew what would happen. They've got particles traveling at 99.999999% of the speed of light. Amazing.
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