'Big Bang Machine' may unlock secrets of Universe - - India News Times

Scientists are of the opinion that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, may unlock many secrets of the Universe. Located at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva, the immense collider, which measures more than 16 miles in circumference, is expected to usher in a new era of particle physics research, enabling scientists to replicate conditions immediately after the Big Bang. Scientists expect the giant machine to generate astonishing new insights into the Big Bang, the building blocks of the universe, the mysterious properties of dark matter and perhaps even extra dimensions in the universe. To that end, on March 19, the collider fired beams of protons in both directions, clockwise and counter-clockwise, at a new world-record energy: 3.5 trillion (or tera) electron volts. The LHC will soon collide these proton beams against each other, allowing physicists to analyze the particles produced in the collisions. CERN eventually plans to collide proton beams at a blistering 7 tera-electron-volts in both directions. Robert Cousins, a UCLA professor of physics who has served as a leader of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at CERN - one of the LHC's four main experiments - is hopeful the collider will lead to extraordinary discoveries about the nature of the universe. "We're going to study the Big Bang as far back as we can take it," said Cousins, whose research group is supported by the US Department of Energy and who is principal investigator on a CMS grant funded by the National Science Foundation. "The fundamental questions were asked by the ancient Greeks: Where did we come from, what are we made of? How did the universe evolve and what are the forces of the universe?" he said. "We think there are undiscovered forces. Nature likely contains extra forces that we have not found yet," Cousins said. "Any successful attempt to unify the known forces of nature will almost certainly unify some unknown forces of nature at the same time," he said. "The job of experimental physicists is to go find those forces. I am most excited about finding new forces that shed light on unification. If you're going to paint the complete picture, you need to know what the other forces are," he added.

Big Bang Machine may unlock secrets of Universe