Mohamed Bughrara
When scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, spun and crashed particles together near the speed of light, they discovered the Higgs Boson particle. They accomplished this by utilizing the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
Scientists believe the Higgs field of energy was formed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang and exists in every region of the universe.
In 2018, the collider completed its second experimental run, producing fresh perspectives on the structures of protons as well as how the Higgs Boson decays, providing further data for understanding how the universe works.
Over three years of infrastructure upgrades and maintenance later, the collider should relaunch by mid-July. CERN released a statement regarding the purpose of their experiment, “Finding the answers to these and other intriguing questions will not only further our understanding of the universe at the smallest scales but may also help unlock some of the biggest mysteries of the universe as a whole, such as how it came to be the way it is and what its ultimate fate might be.”
The third run is expected to provide three times the amount of data as previous runs and will last four years. Meanwhile, scientists are already planning the fourth run, which is expected to begin in 2030.
