We Found The Higgs Boson. What's Next?

After CERN announced in July 2012 that the elusive Higgs Boson particle had finally been discovered, completing the Standard Model jigsaw, the question arose of what Particle Physics would do next. We now know the answer. American scientists at Fermilab have revealed their plan for what will be one of the biggest experiments ever in the history of physics, and at a cost of around £1 billion also one of the most expensive.

The Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) is a project as big as the search for the Higgs Boson particle, and just like that discovery it has the potential to revolutionise particle physics. Put simply, their aim is to fire beams of trillions of neutrinos underground through nearly a thousand miles of rock, from Fermilab in Chicago to Sanford Lab in South Dakota, in the hope of learning more about how our Universe was created.

But what are neutrinos? Why are they so interesting to physicists? Neutrinos are the second most abundant particle in the Universe, after photons. You may not have realised though, as these uncharged particles of tiny mass barely interact with any other particles. Most of them pass just straight though us.

Neutrinos have three types, or flavours - muon, tau, electron - and are able to change between these as they move across the Universe. This characteristic cannot be properly explained by current theories of subatomic physics, so scientists hope that the LBNE will provide new information learning to a better understanding of neutrinos.

The current theories on the creation of the Universe state that just after the Big Bang, there were equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. If this was true, everything should have cancelled out... and yet today we see a significant dominance of ordinary matter. A possible explanation is that something coded within the neutrino transitions enabled ordinary matter to survive. By studying neutrinos further the hope is that we may be able to get clues as to why ordinary matter has been able to survive, allowing us to be here today.

Neutrinos are more likely to change their flavour when they pass through rock than through air or space - hence why the experiment will take place underground, in order to maximise the chances of observing these rare events.

The LBNE is expected to be fully constructed and operational by 2022.

Image Credits:

Neutrino Bubble Chamber Decay - Wikipedia, URL: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neutrino_bubble_chamber_decay_overlay.png

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