Scientists Await Start-up Of Large Hadron Collider
Monday, September 8, 2008 - 21:28
in Physics & Chemistry
The moment that James Pilcher has been waiting for since 1994 will arrive at 1:30 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, Sept. 10, when the world's largest scientific instrument is scheduled to begin operation. Physicists built the particle detector for the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) experiment at LHC, with the search for the Higgs boson and supersymmetry in mind. Theoretically speaking, the long-sought Higgs boson is the particle that endows all objects in the universe with mass. Evidence of supersymmetric particles, meanwhile, could provide an understanding of the dark matter, which makes up about a quarter of the mass of the universe.