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The Standard Model of the universe explained The Standard Model of particle physics is the best answer man has yet come up with to the question: "What is the universe made of?"

Can you see what it is yet? Somewhere in the Standard Model of particle physics the Higgs boson will be revealed

long-sought Higgs boson, sometimes called the God particle

Under the Standard Model, which has been pieced together by physicists over the last 70 years, the universe is believed to be made up of matter (four per cent atoms and 20 per cent "dark matter" that we cannot observe or explain) and energy (76 per cent "dark energy"). The model explains the way 17 subatomic particles are bound together to create atoms and then matter by three of the four fundamental forces of nature: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear forceand electromagnetism. It excludes the fourth force: gravity. The particles fit into two categories: bosons, which transmit forces, and fermions, which make up matter. Fermions consist of 6 quark varieties and 6 lepton varieties. Every lepton has a corresponding neutrino (an energy-carrying particle of very low mass and high velocity) and all these particles also have antimatter versions, which behave in the same way, but annihilate upon contact with matter, converting the mass of both particles into pure energy. Nearly all matter is formed by two types of quark the up quark and thedown quark and one type of lepton: the electron. The remaining four quarks (top, down, strange and bottom quarks) and five leptons (electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau and tau neutrino ) are simply larger versions of those three main particle types.

Bosons come in four categories which mediate the three fundamental forces mentioned above. The most familiar boson is the photon which mediates electromagnetism, which is responsible for the phenomena of electricity, magnetism and light. W bosons and Z bosons mediate the weak nuclear force and gluons mediate the strong nuclear force which binds quarks together into larger particles such as neutrons andprotons. The existence of the Higgs boson is also predicted by the Standard Model but it has not yet been found. It is thought to be the particle responsible for the mechanism by which all the other particles acquire mass. The graviton is another hypothetical boson which could mediate the force of gravity. If it were ever found, the Standard Model could finally be replaced by the elusive Theory of Everything, which would unite all four fundamental forces of nature.

During the first collisions of the LHC's (The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ) twin beams of protons, a machine called A Large Ion Collider Experiment, or ALICE, collected the results from a proton-proton smashup. Protons are positively charged subatomic particles found in the nuclei of atoms. Colliders such as the LHC are designed to crash such particles together so that they break apart into even more basic components, offering scientists a glimpse of the fundamental building blocks of matter. For the Large Hadron Collider's first result, ALICE found that a proton-proton collision recorded on November 23 created the precise ratio of matter and antimatter particles predicted from theory. The collision occurred at the lowest energy possible in the LHCeach beam had just 450 billion electron volts (GeV), creating a 900 GeV collision.
This accelerator takes protons, which are the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, and accelerates them to nearly the speed of light, Cranmer said.

The LHC is a circular tunnel, 27 kilometres in circumference, lying under the Swiss-French border, where highenergy protons in two counter-rotating beams collide to reproduce conditions fractions of a second after the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. Particle collision is something like taking two cars on the opposite side of a race track and crashing them into each other head on. Through the experiments at the LHC, scientists are looking for new or previously unseen particles which they predict could help explain the nature of mass, the source of mysterious dark matter, new properties of space and time, as well as what the universe was like in its infancy. The collider is an internationally-funded project which cost $10 billion (SFr 8.4 billion) and began operating in 2008. Cranmer, an Assistant Professor at NYU, works on the ATLAS experiment, which is one of two multi-purpose particle detectors buried 100 metres underground at Cern. Usually we think of turning matter into energy, but we're doing the reverse process, we're taking a huge amount of energy and making matter, Cranmer said. When the protons collide with each other at the LHC, there's enough energy to produce new particles. The energy needed to create a particle is its mass times the square of the speed of light or E=MC. So the bigger the mass of the new particle to be created in the collision, the more energy needed. Normally, two particles will repel each other. So you need to fire them at really high velocity to get them to crash, said Rubin Amaez, a 17-year old volunteer at the event. The LHC is filled with superconductor magnets to steer and focus the protons in beams that repeatedly circle the ring. But there is a practical limit to the strength of the magnets, so to reach the needed energy level, the curvature of the particles paths needs to be reduced, hence the need for the 27-kilometre circumference. As Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg put it at the World Science Festival: If we want to discover new varieties of matter, we have to build bigger accelerators. Inside the LHC, the collisions form new particles that fly out into the detectors, which are like huge digital cameras, snapping about 40 million photos a second. Of the enormous amounts of data collected, only a few collisions have the special characteristics that might lead to new discoveries. Most of the data is discarded, Steven Goldfarb told the crowd via a video link from the ATLAS control room in Geneva. If we took all the data we would be storing a petabyte of data every second, which is about a thousand of the disks that you can buy at the store. In New York, Cranmer stands next to an enormously complicated mathematical equation hes affixed to his booth with lines and lines of variables which is the widely accepted theory of physics known as the Standard Model. This huge equation describes how your cell phone works, why the sun shines, and just about everything is embedded in this formula, Cranmer tells the crowd. It only took me 15 years of studying it to understand it! He explains that one of the main goals of the LHC experiments is to confirm a major piece of the Standard Model that has not yet been confirmed, called the Higgs boson, named after the British scientist who first suggested it as the agent that gives mass to particles.

As we find out every morning when we step on the scale we definitely have mass and weight, Cranmer says. "The mystery is why fundamental particles have mass -- and that's where the Higgs boson comes in." "We have this beautiful theory that describes the world so well, that has survived every test we've thrown at it in the last 20 years, but if we don't see the Higgs at the LHC, that theory is wrong that would be both confusing and exciting." But the experiments are looking beyond the Standard Model in the hope of unlocking the mysteries of the universe. The experiments also hope to investigate why most of the universe is dominated by an unknown type of matter called dark matter. Dark matter is one of the oldest mysteries in physics; while scientists have known about it since the 1930s, they still don't know what it is. We may be able to produce the particles that make up the dark matter at the LHC and put this decades -old mystery to rest, Cranmer said. Antimatter definitely exists but not in the way described in Dan Brown's popular book Angels and Demons, Cranmer said. We do make it, but it takes too much energy to create enough antimatter for practical applications, Cranmer says. The book suggests that antimatter created by Cern could be produced in useful and practical quantities and be a limitless source of power. As for the ATLAS project, it has started to yield results, according to Goldfarb. We've made some discoveries. We saw for the very first time what matter was like in the early universe, microseconds after the big bang, before even protons were formed, he said. But the Cern scientists hope the very exciting discoveries are still to come. Cranmer encouraged the children at the street fair to study hard because there are still amazing things to find out.

Large Hadron Collider

- It is 4.5 times longer than the Tevatron in Chicago, previously the largest particle accelerator, and has about 50 times more energy stored in its beams.

- An estimated 10,000 people from 60 countries have helped design and build the accelerators and its massive particle detectors.

- The LHC, which currently operates at 3.5 trillion electron volts will be upgraded in 2013 so that it can run at seven trillion volts, starting in 2014.

How does a collider work?

Colliders have two functions, to accelerate particles to high speeds in beams about 2mm wide (small enough to pass through the 0 on a 20 pence piece) and to then direct the beams to collide head-on at the collision points at the heart of the detectors. The LHC is the worlds most powerful particle accelerator and will create collision energies 7x greater than previous machines. The particles the LHC will accelerate and collide are protons or lead nuclei, both have positive charges and this means that they can be steered by use of appropriate magnetic fields. Various types of superconducting magnets (9,300 in total) are used to steer and focus beams of particles as they race around the 27km loop of the LHC collider. The LHC carries two beams, travelling in opposite directions, in two, adjacent beam pipes. At the collision points the beams briefly share the same pipe as the magnets direct them to collide head-on. The beam pipes are enclosed in a sheath of superconducting magnets and all of this is bathed in supercold liquid helium (1.8 oK). The magnets, which make up the bulk of the collider, are only one part of the story. The other task of the collider is to accelerate the particles as they travel around it. This is done at 4 locations where the particles pass through superconducting radio frequency (RF) cavities. Just like pushing a childs swing, these RF cavities give the particles a push each time they pass, steadily increasing the energy of the particles prior to collision. The LHC is the last in a ladder of accelerators that are used in sequence to acceler ate low energy particles up to the LHCs maximum energy.

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1) How did our universe come to be the way it is? The Universe started with a Big Bang but we dont fully understand how or why it developed the way it did. The LHC will let us see how matter behaved a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers have some ideas of what to expect but also expect the unexpected! 2) What kind of Universe do we live in? Many physicists think the Universe has more dimensions than the four (space and time) we are aware of. Will the LHC bring us evidence of new dimensions? Gravity does not fit comfortably into the current descriptions of forces used by physicists. It is also very much weaker than the other forces. One explanation for this may be that our Universe is part of a larger multi dimensional reality and that gravity can leak into other dimensions, making it appear weaker. The LHC may allow us to see evidence of these extra dimensions - for example, the production of mini-black holes which blink into and out of existence in a tiny fraction of a second. 3) What happened in the Big Bang? What was the Universe made of before the matter we see around us formed? The LHC will recreate, on a microscale, conditions that existed during the first billionth of a second of the Big Bang. At the earliest moments of the Big Bang, the Universe consisted of a searingly hot soup of fundamental particles - quarks, leptons and the force carriers. As the Universe cooled to 1000 billion degrees, the quarks and gluons (carriers of the strong force) combined into composite particles like protons and neutrons. The LHC will collide lead nuclei so that they release their constituent quarks in a

fleeting Little Bang. This will take us back to the time before these particles formed, re -creating the conditions early in the evolution of the universe, when quarks and gluons were free to mix without combining. The debris detected will provide important information about this very early state of matter. 4) Where is the antimatter? The Big Bang created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but we only see matter now. What happened to the antimatter? Every fundamental matter particle has an antimatter partner with equal but opposite properties such as electric charge (for example, the negative electron has a positive antimatter partner called the positron). Equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the Big Bang, but antimatter then disappeared. So what happened to it? Experiments have already shown that some matter particles decay at different rates from their anti-particles, which could explain this. One of the LHC experiments will study these subtle differences between matter and antimatter particles. 5) Why do particles have mass? Why do some particles have mass while others dont? What makes this difference? If the LHC reveal particles predicted by theory it will help us understand this. Particles of light (known as photons) have no mass. Matter particles (such as electrons and quarks) do and were not sure why. British physicist, Peter Higgs, proposed the existence of a field (the Higgs Field), which pervades the entire Universe and interacts with some particles and this gives them mass. If the theory is right then the field should reveal itself as a particle (the Higgs particle). The Higgs particle is too heavy to be made in existing accelerators, but the high energies of the LHC should enable us to produce and detect it. 6) What is our Universe made of? Ninety-six percent of our Universe is missing! Much of the missing matter is stuff researchers have called dark matter. Can the LHC find out what it is made of? The theory of supersymmetry suggests that all known particles have, as yet undetected, superpartners. If they exist, the LHC should find them. These supersymmetric particles may help explain one mystery of the Universe missing matter. Astronomers detect the gravitational effects of large amounts of matter that cant be seen and so is called Dark Matter. One possible explanation of dark matter is that it consists of supersymmetric particles. 1) I have heard that the LHC will recreate the Big Bang, does that mean it might create another Universe and if so what will happen to our Universe? People sometimes refer to recreating the Big Bang, but this is misleading. What they actually mean is:

recreating the conditions and energies that existed shortly after the start of the Big Bang, not the moment at which the Big Bang started recreating conditions on a microscale, not on the same scale as the original Big Bang and recreating energies that are continually being produced naturally (by high energy cosmic rays hitting the earths atmosphere) but at will and inside sophisticated detectors that track what is happening

No Big Bang so no possibility of creating a new Universe.

2) How much did the LHC cost and who pays? The direct total LHC project cost is 2.6bn, made up of:

the collider (2.1bn) the detectors (575m)

The total cost is shared mainly by CERN's 20 Member States, with significant contributions from the six observer nations. The UK pays ~95m per year as our annual subscription to CERN. The LHC project involves 111 nations in designing, building and testing equipment and software, participating in experiments and analysing data. The degree of involvement varies between countries, with some able to contribute more financial and human resource than others. 3) CERN stands for 'Conseil Europen pour la Recherche Nuclaire' (or European Council for Nuclear Research); does that mean that CERN is studying nuclear power and nuclear weapons? At the time that CERN was established (1952 1954) physics research was exploring the inside of the atom, hence the word nuclear in its title. CERN has never been involved in research on nuclear power or nuclear weapons, but has done much to increase our understanding of the fundamental structure of the atom. The title CERN is actually an historical remnant. It comes from the name of the council that was founded to establish a European organisation for world-class physics research. The Council was dissolved once the new organisation (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) was formed, but the name CERN remained. 4) Why is the LHC underground? Is it because it is doing secret experiments that scientists want to hide away? The LHC has been built in a tunnel originally constructed for a previous collider (LEP the Large Electron Positron collider). This was the most economic solution to building both LEP and the LHC. It was cheaper to build an underground tunnel than acquire the equivalent land above ground. Putting the machine underground also greatly reduces the environmental impact of the LHC and associated activities. The rock surrounding the LHC is a natural shield that reduces the amount of natural radiation that reaches the LHC and this reduces interference with the detectors. Vice versa, radiation produced when the LHC is running is safely shielded by 50 100 metres of rock. 5) Can the work at CERN be used to build more deadly weapons? Unlikely for two main reasons. Firstly, CERN and the scientists and engineers working there have no interest in weapons research. They are trying to understand how the world works, not how to destroy it. Secondly, the high energy particle beams produced at the LHC require a huge machine (27km long, weighing more than 38,000 tonnes half the weight of an aircraft carrier), consuming 120MW of power and needing 91 tonnes of supercold liquid helium). The beams themselves have a lot of energy (the equivalent of a Eurostar train travelling at top speed) but they can only be maintained in a vacuum, if released into the atmosphere they would immediately interact with atoms in the air and dissipate their energy in a very short distance.

6) Are the high energies produced by the LHC dangerous and what happens if something goes wrong? The LHC does produce very high energies, but these energy levels are restricted to tiny volumes inside the detectors. Many high energy particles, from collisions, are produced every second, but the detectors are designed to track and stop all particles (except neutrinos) as capturing all the energy from collisions is essential to identifying what particles have been produced. Very little of the energy from collisions is able to escape from the detectors. The main danger from these energy levels is to the LHC machine itself. The beam of particles has the energy of a Eurostar train travelling at full speed and should something happen to destabilise the particle beam there is a real danger that all of that energy will be deflected into the wall of the beam pipe and the magnets of the LHC, causing a great deal of damage. The LHC has several automatic safety systems in place that monitor all the critical parts of the LHC. Should anything unexpected happen (power or magnet failure for example) the beam is automatically dumped by being squirted into a blind tunnel where its energy is safely dissipated. This all happens in milliseconds the beam, which is travelling at 11,000 circuits of the LHC per second, will complete less than 3 circuits before the dump is complete.