If it doesn’t show up anywhere, look in the trash. That’s where one team of particle hunters at the Large Hadron Collider think their quarry might be hiding – as a signal in the energies of protons discarded from its beam.
Last December, researchers at CERN, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, presented the first results from the recently retooled LHC. It began smashing particles together at its highest energy levels yet last April. Hints of a new and unexpected particle with a mass of around 750 gigaelectronvolts (GeV) set theorists aflutter trying to figure out its origin.
It’s not clear if this particle actually exists, so firming up the detection statistics is a top priority. The LHC is normally switched off during the winter, and is currently gearing up to start colliding again later this month.
Normally, two beams of protons circle its 27-kilometre ring and smash together inside four detectors – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb – producing showers of particles. When it restarts, some of these could turn out to be the 750 GeV particle.
Now Risto Orava of the University of Helsinki, Finland, and his colleagues are proposing a hack to create a new way of searching.
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