The Large Hadron Collider, shining light on the dark side of the Universe

by Prof. Anders Karlhede (Fysikum)

Thursday 22 Mar 2007, 15:15 → 16:15 Europe/Stockholm

Klein Auditorium

Known matter, capable of participating in chemical and nuclear reaction builds only 5% of the Universe. We do not know why even this 5% exists and what exactly makes is massive. Dark Matter, an unknown form of matter forming close to 23% of the Universe is important at cosmological scales, binding galaxies and inducing structure formations. Can we produce Dark Matter in laboratory experiments and study its properties? Can we uncover the very reason for the existence of mass? Can we understand matter-antimatter asymmetry? Could all these questions be connected? In the 27km long tunnel previously belonging to Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN Large Hadron Collider is now located. It will start its operation in the fall. After many years of preparations the time zero is finally approaching. Teams of ATLAS and CMS, two multistory, general purpose detectors build with micrometer precision, are racing against time to get them ready for this year proton-proton collisions. In summer 2008 collisions at center of mass energy of 14 TeV will start, exceeding by a factor of 10 what was previously achieved. Where will this leap take us and will we be able to understand what we see? Status report, educated guesses and speculations will be presented.