After three years of maintenance, the LHC particle accelerator of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin, on the French-Swiss border, is ready for new experiments. This phase will make it possible, in the coming years, for the accumulation of ten times more data by the largest machine ever built by man, which seeks to explain the origin of the universe and matter.
Coincidence or not on the calendar, collisions in the superaccelerator will officially restart on July 5, the day after the tenth anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs boson, this Tuesday (4), one of the most important in the history of physics.
The particle is one of the key pieces to help scientists understand how matter formed after the Big Bang, the explosion that would have given rise to the universe, about 13 billion years ago. Research involving the LHC, the largest particle physics laboratory on the planet, seeks to understand the emergence of the cosmos and everything that composes it – the smallest particles that form it and hold it together.
The Brazilian scientist Denis Oliveira Damazio has been working at CERN for over 20 years and contributed to this great discovery in Physics. He works on experiments at the ATLAS detector and says that there were already signs that something “exceptional” was about to be confirmed, on the day of the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson. CERN has prepared a series of events to celebrate the date.
