A new type of experiment in the Great Hadron Colider could unravel quantum reality

For Alan BarrIt started during the COVID-19 blocks. “I had a little more time. I could sit and think, “he says.

He had enjoyed being part of the success in the Great Colider of Hadrones del Cern (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, the particle collider who discovered the Higgs boson. But now, he wondered, were they missing a trick? “He had spent long hours screwing him together. And I thought: “Well, we have built this beautiful device, but maybe we could be doing more with him,” he says.

LHC is usually seen as a machine to find new particles. But now Barr and a series of other physicists ask if it can also be used to investigate the underlying meaning of quantum theory and why reality paints as strange.

That is exactly what Barr and his colleagues are now investigating. Last year, they published the results of an experiment in which they showed that pairs of fundamental particles called superior quarks could be placed in the quantum state known as Tango.

This was only the first of many tangle experiments in particle colals that could open a new way of studying the nature of the universe. Now we can ask why reality in quantum mechanics is so difficult to specify and what this has to do with experimenters, or even particles, who have free will. Doing so could reveal whether space-time is fundamental or perhaps revealing a deeper reality that is even more strange than quantum mechanics. “We can do really different things with this colider,” says Barr.