What’s Next for the Large Hadron Collider? PhD Comics Introduces the Search for Extra Dimensions

With the announce­ment this sum­mer that sci­en­tists at CERN believe they’ve found the long-sought-after sub­atom­ic par­ti­cle called the Hig­gs boson, the ques­tion aris­es: What’s next for the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? In this new ani­mat­ed dis­cus­sion from Jorge Cham at PhD Comics, physi­cists Daniel White­son and Jonathan Feng of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, explain how the work at the LHC isn’t even remote­ly fin­ished yet. Some of the most inter­est­ing exper­i­ments will involve the search for evi­dence of extra dimen­sions, a con­cept that may hold the key to a num­ber of mys­ter­ies. As White­son and Feng explain, a par­ti­cle mov­ing in anoth­er dimen­sion would have a greater mass than oth­er­wise expect­ed, as a con­se­quence of Ein­stein’s spe­cial the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty. The LHC might be used to find evi­dence of these heav­ier ver­sions of par­ti­cles. “So what we’re look­ing for,” says White­son, “is nor­mal mat­ter, but heav­ier ver­sions of it.” For more ani­mat­ed physics from PhD Comics you can see our ear­li­er posts on the Hig­gs boson and dark mat­ter. And to learn more about physics, see our long list of Free Physics Cours­es in our col­lec­tion of over 500 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Lawrence Krauss on the Mys­te­ri­ous Allure of Extra Dimen­sions