The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most complex device ever created by humans, and it allows us to explore previously unknown areas of physics. However, this puzzle still lacks several elements. Scientists hope that a relatively modest new tool next to the LHC could find these lost elements – the lost particles. A massive chronometric hodoscope for ultra-stable neutral particles (MATHUSLA) is still at the planning stage, but ultimately promises to detect lost particles that escape from the LHC.
The LHC began working in 2008, and one of its main tasks was to search for the Higgs boson. This elementary particle, first proposed by Peter Higgs in 1964, is an important part of the “standard model” of physics. The Higgs boson explains why other particles have mass. The BAC data showed that the Higgs boson exists, but it has one problem: it is not as massive as predicted by quantum mechanics. Therefore, physicists must take this missing mass into account and explain it. It is here that a new project will enter the work.
MATHUSLA will search for particles that the LHC does not see, due to the fact that they are too stable. Tank detectors like the ATLAS tool are looking for the decay of exotic particles that occurs when protons collide with one another in a collider. They live, as a rule, supermalo, but scientists suspect that some of them may be more stable than expected. Therefore, MATHUSLA will look for “ultrastable” particles.
MATHUSLA will be essentially a warehouse full of particle detectors located at a height of 20 meters above ground level above the LHC. Particles that escape from the LHC without appearing in the data can appear in the MATHUSLA detectors a fraction of a second later. A thick granite floor will be able to filter down a shower of less interesting particles, leaving only those that deserve attention.
Scientists have good reason to suspect that MATHUSLA has to find something. Throughout history, corrections have appeared in physics that take into account such holes, which later turned out to be forces and particles, which we just did not learn about in time. Construction MATHUSLA will cost a penny, compared with the LHC: $ 50 million against 10 billion.
