Tag Archives: Large Hadron Collider

What the universe is made of

The massive team that helped discover the Higgs boson is now hunting more exotic particles, including dark matter.

The ATLAS collaboration involves more than 3,000 physicists from around the world. In 2012, results from ATLAS were vital to the discovery of the Higgs boson, the particle that gives mass to everything in the Universe.

The 7000-tonne ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider on the border of France and Switzerland tracks up to a billion collisions between high-energy protons each second. French and Australian physicists are at the forefront of efforts to decipher this torrent of data. Continue reading What the universe is made of

Higgs boson: the Australian connection

In 2012, scientists celebrated at the announcement of the discovery of a Higgs boson-like particle, a subatomic particle that completes our model of how the Universe works.

Director of the High Energy Physics Conference, Geoff Taylor (right) celebrates the Higgs-like particle announcement at the Melbourne Convention Centre. Credit: Laura Vanags/ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale
Director of the High Energy Physics Conference, Geoff Taylor (right) celebrates the Higgs-like particle announcement at the Melbourne Convention Centre with Pauline Gagnon of CERN. Credit: Laura Vanags/ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale

The announcement was made simultaneously at CERN in Geneva, and to hundreds of physicists gathered in Melbourne for the International Conference on High Energy Physics.

“As scientific discoveries go, this is up there with finding a way to split the atom,” says Prof Geoff Taylor, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale (CoEPP).

Continue reading Higgs boson: the Australian connection

Australian Synchrotron helps its big brother in Geneva

New technologies and techniques needed for the next upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are being tested at the Australian Synchrotron.

The Australian Synchrotron is helping CERN researchers develop better particle beams for the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: The Australian Synchrotron
The Australian Synchrotron is helping CERN researchers develop better particle beams for the Large Hadron Collider. Credit: The Australian Synchrotron

In 2013, the LHC will shut down for enhancements that will enable it to generate a reliable supply of Higgs-like particles.
Continue reading Australian Synchrotron helps its big brother in Geneva

Spinning galaxies reveal missing matter

PHOTO: DARK MATTER DOMINATES GALAXIES AND GROUPS OF GALAXIES, YET ITS IDENTITY REMAINS UNKNOWN. CREDIT: DAVID MALIN, AUSTRALIAN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY.
PHOTO: DARK MATTER DOMINATES GALAXIES AND GROUPS OF GALAXIES, YET ITS IDENTITY REMAINS UNKNOWN. CREDIT: DAVID MALIN, AUSTRALIAN ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORY.

Australian astronomers have long been contributing to our understanding of a strange cosmological phenomenon—the Universe’s missing matter.

In the early 1970s, Ken Freeman of the Australian National University (ANU) determined that spiral galaxies must contain more matter than we can see. He postulated that dark matter—an invisible material first proposed 40 years earlier—must make up at least half the mass of these galaxies. Now, patches of dark matter are thought to be scattered across the Universe, playing a major role in holding galaxies and groups of galaxies together. Continue reading Spinning galaxies reveal missing matter