UCL’s role in world’s largest scientific experiment

UCL's Professor John Butterworth, who led the UK development of one of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detectors, explains the significance of the record-breaking particle collisions achieved today. Protons collided at seven trillion volts ? the highest energies ever achieved by a man-made particle accelerator ? at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), which houses the LHC, near Geneva. The breakthrough marks the start of a two-year campaign that could see scientists make new discoveries about the universe and answer some of the unresolved questions in physics. The LHC aims to explore the nature of the universe moments after the Big Bang and to improve the understanding of how the universe was created, what it is made of and how it will evolve. Professor John Womersley, particle physicist and Director of Science Programmes at Science & Technology Facilities Council, explained: ?Over the coming months scientists will use data collected at these high energies first to cross-check data and theories from previous experiments, and then to search for particles and forces which we know must exist in the universe but which have never been observed. In the next couple of years this could lead to the discovery of a new law of physics called supersymmetry ? which could explain the dark matter that seems to dominate our universe ? and even to the discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson particle. CERN will run the LHC at seven trillion electric volts for 18 months to two years to deliver enough data to the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) and two other experiments to make significant advances across a wide range of physics areas.