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Blog

What do you most hope the LHC will discover after it is switched back on in 2015?

By James Dacey

Photo of CMS detector

Admiring the insides of the CMS detector at CERN.

My colleague, Hamish Johnston, has just returned from a trip to CERN, where he was granted access to the insides of the Large Hadron Colider (LHC), which is currently being upgraded. He has shared some great photos from his trip on the Physics World Facebook page, including some snaps of the interior of the detector experiments.

CERN engineers are hoping that when the LHC is fired up again – currently scheduled for 2015 – it will collide particles at 13 TeV, almost double the energy it was running at for the two years before it closed down this February. This higher energy should enable physicists to probe deeper into some of the biggest unanswered questions in fundamental physics. In this week’s Facebook poll, we want you to answer the following question.

What do you most hope the LHC will discover after it is switched back on in 2015?

The true nature of the Higgs boson
Evidence for supersymmetry
Why there is more matter than antimatter
Mini black holes
The nature of the strong force
The nature of dark matter
Something else [Please post a comment on the poll or this blog entry to explain]

To have your say, please visit our Facebook page.

In last week’s poll we asked you to select what you believe is the best way to measure a researcher’s contribution to science. From the list we provided, the most popular choice was “the novelty of their research”, which picked up 57% of the vote. It was interesting to see from the spread of votes that only 15% of people went for “the frequency with which their work is cited”, and not a single person chose “number of publications”.

The poll also attracted a lively discussion, with several people pointing out that it is very difficult to evaluate the “novelty” of somebody’s research. There was also an interesting suggestion from one Facebook follower called Antonio Martinez Lobo, who suggested that one could take account of the number of “relevant disciples” attracted by a scientist. For example, the number of PhD students or top scientists inspired by an initial piece of research.

Thank you for all your participation and we hope to hear from you again this week.

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7 comments

  1. M. Asghar

    Anything beyond the particle SM should be worthwhile knowing that upto now it has shown to be totally exclusive.

  2. M. Asghar

    The SM is a QM-structure and does not deal with relativity – a classical structure.

    • Peerally

      Relativity is seen by most as classical but I also see it from the GM angle. I will give supporting ideas. There are similarities and differences from SR and GR. Einstein was quite uncertain about what exactly to say about mass increasing to near infinity as velocity in the proximity of c. But I can predict that no matter how much mass goes up, there is not possibility of the formation of miniblackholes. This needs QM to rationalise.

  3. reader01

    I would be glad if it reveals supersymmetry. Maybe we then could be able calculate with superparticles in STR and quantum theory. Imagine that collisions make superpaticles would be new for STR and quantum theory. It will become no theory but true physics we can be able to touch…how could superparticles fall into theory of Higgs boson. And if superparticles can make mini black holes? All depends to all, so if we find something new then it will have big meaning comparable with finding Higgs boson.

  4. reader01

    I mean supersymmetry. Especialy I would like to know if exist also antimatter superparticles? And why we cannot see them in quantum fluctuation of vacuum: is it only matter of high energy physics? And exist any high energy quantum fluctuation physics?

  5. Anon Y. Mouse

    What do you most hope the LHC will discover after it is switched back on in 2015?

    A faster, better way to heat my Hungry-Man.

  6. Trackback: Blog - physicsworld.com

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