Explained: Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and discovery of New Theory in Physics

Large Hadron Collider: Why in News?

In the previous week Scientists at Large Hadron Collider, Switzerland discovered a brand new force of nature which might violate the standard laws of physics. Let us know about the hadron collider and the recent discovery in detail below.

What is different from the standard model of physics?

The physicists at CERN are under the impression that they have found a situation that the Standard Model would be unable to explain. 

The Standard model predicts a particle known as beauty quark must decay into two particles called muons and electrons at about the same rate. However through the recent experiment conducted it violates the rule as it was seen that it actually decays into electrons more often than muons.

What is the Significance of the experiment?

The standard model of physics is non revealing of many questions about the universe that are still unanswered. Although the standard model is great at telling us about matter and energy, it does not provide the complete account of dark matter and dark energy that might be the cause of many things in the universe. 

The dark matter needs an explanation to define the existence of movement of galaxies and stars and also why our universe exists in the first place. Does that question not bother you?

The standard model is also difficult to go with our explanation of gravity and Einstein's theory of general relativity. 

Thus this new theory could provide answers to those unanswered questions 

What next?

Scientists however need new empirical data to think beyond the Standard Model of Physics but not a prediction so central to the theory that we need to rebuild from the ground up.Through beauty quarks decay study would help them to know about the theory but not from scratch. 

This result was called a 3 Sigma Finding. They have discovered something that does not have a strong reason to reject the assumptions made in the first place. As per the scientists," a 3-sigma result means there is a roughly 1 in 1,000 probability that observations at least as extreme as those gathered would occur, given the Standard Model."

A 5 Sigma result is what the physicists wait for. They have been used since ages. To confirm a discovery, ideally the results need to be replicated using a different experimental set up (one that doesn’t risk also replicating the same errors), preferably more than once. That’s why the physicists at CERN are hoping their results will be replicated by the Belle experiment in Japan.

The breaking down of beauty meson in ways not adding up with the predictions indicate that either the predictions earlier were wrong or the numbers were out. 

After enough experiments, sufficient data can be collected to compare the chances of errors with the likelihood of an interesting new discovery.

What are Mesons?

Mesons are a type of hadron which are similar to the proton. However, instead of consisting of three quarks in a stable formation under strong interactions, they are made of only two that is a quark and an anti-quark.

What is a Beauty Meson?

The beauty meson is a down quark connected to a bottom anti-quark. When the particle's properties are seen with the Standard Model, the decay of  b-meson must produce pairs of electrons and positrons, or electron-like muons and their opposites, anti-muons.

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