Hell Yeah, We May Get a Biblical Addition to the Giant Hadron Collider

The world’s largest particle collider is ready to get a model new toy, named for the oldest man within the Bible.

The toy–a detector, truly—is named MATHUSLA. Researchers submitted a conceptual design report for the detector’s design to the preprint server arXiv on March 26, the place it’s now hosted.

“MATHUSLA” is a merciful and extremely pressured acronym for the MAssive Timing Hodoscope for Extremely-Steady neutraL pArticles. The acronym is a reference to Methuselah, a biblical determine who lived almost 1,000 years. Why the title? As a result of the hodoscope would search out particularly long-lived particles within the Giant Hadron Collider, which have up to now escaped detection amid the collider’s subatomic fireworks present.

The LHC achieved considered one of its predominant objectives over a decade in the past, with the commentary of a Higgs boson in 2012. Since then, particle physicists have been pondering how the large, pricey collider can yield further insights into the elemental constructing blocks and interactions of classical physics.

The LHC is ready to be upgraded into the High-Luminosity LHC, which can enhance the power’s luminosity by an element of ten and enhance the variety of Higgs bosons CERN physicists will be capable of examine. That improve is anticipated to be accomplished by 2029, and MATHUSLA is proposed to work alongside the improved model of the world-famous collider.

The elemental design of the detector is thus: an enormous field, 131 toes (40 meters) on either side and 36 toes (11 m) tall. The field could be full of detectors that might sniff out long-lived particles that elude the LHC’s predominant detectors.

The brand new detector’s approximate value, based on the report, is $44.5 million (€40 million). Is it low cost? Nope. But it’s designed to be cost-effective: smaller than earlier proposals, however nonetheless large enough to be game-changing.

Late final month, CERN outlined a feasibility examine for the Future Round Collider (FCC), the could-be successor to the LHC. The $17 billion FCC could be thrice the scale of the LHC, buried twice as deep underground, and would start operations earlier than 2050—although it wouldn’t be accomplished earlier than the top of the century.

MATHUSLA would provide outcomes sooner. Physicists’ hope is to have MATHUSLA able to trip alongside the HL-LHC, which is slated to start full-throttle operations within the 2030s.

So long as the detector’s title doesn’t change into a punchline for the time it takes for it to change into a actuality, there’s a brand new alternative for physicists to seek out physics on the brink of our present understanding.