Article written by Prof Victoria Martin, University of Edinburgh
The fourth of July 2022 saw the 10th anniversary of the discovery of the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Both Edinburgh and Glasgow are members of the ATLAS Experiment collaboration - one of the two experiments that made the discovery - and of the LHCb Experiment collaboration that investigates on other of particle physics phenomena, including the quantifying the asymmetry between matter and anti-matter.
Edinburgh & Glasgow particle physicists celebrated the Higgs10 anniversary with an event at the National Museum of Scotland attracting around 400 participants. YouTube star & professional science communicator Dr Sam Gregson (aka "bad boy of science") presented two interactive shows; PPE PhD students & researchers provided hands-on exhibits - from make your own particle collision (aimed at the youngest attendees) to test-driving robots used in underground particle physics experiments. In the evening, around 100 invited guests, colleagues and supporters attended a drinks reception and talk by Prof Victoria Martin (Edinburgh).
On the 5th of July 2022, the LHC started its third experimental run with a higher collision energy and with more-intense protons collisions. LHCb and ATLAS PhD students and researchers will analyse the collisions with the aim of making precision measurements of the Higgs boson, matter-anti-matter asymmetries, discovering new tetra- and penta-quark states and searching for evidence of as-yet-unknown ("new") physics including the origin of dark matter.
Further Information:
- Nature paper from ATLAS on the Higgs boson with 10 years' data: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04893-w
- CERN news on the new LHC run: https://www.home.cern/news/news/cern/third-run-large-hadron-collider-has-successfully-started
Flyer created by Elma Syrjala and Mary Richardson-Slipper.