If two particles collide inside an accelerator or in the depths of the space is irrelevant; The only thing that matters is that we can detect the rubble of what comes out, including the newly created “daughter” particles. Although the flow of high -energy particles in space is lower, attainable energies are much greater than in terrestrial laboratories. (Credit: flashmovie / adobe shares)
Will we build a successor collider for the LHC? Someday, we will reach the real limit of what experiments can probe. But that will not be the end.
Since the nineteenth century, energy particles have investigated the fundamental nature of matter.
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Rutherford’s gold sheet experiment showed that the atom was mostly empty space, but that there was a concentration of mass at a point that was much greater than the mass of an alpha particle: the atomic nucleus. When observing that some of the radioactive particles issued were recovered, or bouncing, in a different direction than those that were issued, Rutherford was able to demonstrate the existence of a compact and massive nucleus to the atom of the atom. (Credit: Chris Impey)
By bombarding matter with other particles, we probe its internal structures.
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The production of pairs of material/antimatter (left) of two photons is a completely reversible (right) reaction, with subject/antimatter annihilating two photons. This process of creation and anihilation, which obeys e = mc², is the only known way to create and destroy matter or antimatter. If high-energy gamma rays collide with other particles, there is the possibility of producing electron-positron pairs, decreasing the gamma ray flow observed at large distances. (Credit: Dmitri Pogosyan/Alberta University)
In even greater energies, we create new how many through Einstein’s E = mc².
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When carrying a hot air balloon to large altitudes, much higher than you could simply walk, walking or leading anywhere, the scientist Victor HESS was able to use a detector to demonstrate the existence and reveal the components of the cosmic rays. In many ways, these first expeditions, dating from 1912, marked the birth of cosmic ray astrophysics. (Credit: VF HESS Society, Schloss Pöllau/Austria)
The first experiments with cosmic rays first revealed heavy and unstable standard model particles.
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It was determined that the first muon never detected, along with other cosmic ray particles, was the same load as the electron, but hundreds of times heavier, due to its speed and radio of curvature. The muón was the first of the heaviest generations of particles that were discovered, which date back to the 1930s. (Credit: P. Kunze, Zeitschrift Für Physik, 1933)
