Large Hadron Collider Gears Up for Further Research on the Higgs Boson

The Large Hadron Collider is almost ready to be up and back in action after its shutdown nearly two years ago. So what's in store for the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth? That's a good question.

Since shutting down in early 2013, the LHC and its detectors have undergone a multitude of upgrades and repairs. In fact, when the particle accelerators restarts, it will be better than ever; it will cause protons to collide at an unprecedented energy of 13 trillion electron volts. Scaled up into the macroscopic world, this force is roughly the same as an apple hitting the moon hard enough to create a crater about 6 miles across.

The first run of the LHC ended with the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, which was predicted by the Standard Model of particles and forces. Now, scientists want to know a bit more about this Higgs particle.

"All the properties of the Higgs boson are already predicted by the Standard Model, so it's our job to go out and measure those properties and see if they agree," said Jay Hauser, one of the researchers, in a news release. "If anything disagrees, it could be a window to new physics."

The researchers suspect that the Higgs boson may react with a range of hidden, massive particles that we can't see, such as dark matter. If the Higgs boson is interacting with these particles, scientists should see evidence of the other particles in the way the Higgs behaves. But even if the Higgs agrees with all predictions, something about it seems a bit off.

"The Higgs mass doesn't make any sense," said Beate Heinemann, a physicist and deputy head of the ATLAS experiment. "It would make much more sense if it was much heavier, which is why we think there must be something that protects the Higgs boson and gives it a lower mass."

As the LHC fires up again, scientists plan to examine  the Higgs a bit more closely in order to learn about other particles and, possibly, detect dark matter.

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