the last major science work that came
from the larron collider the collider
finished in
2012 did pretty well a higs higs BOS on
emerged and has uh rightfully given
Nobel prizes to onair and higs himself
then since 2012 it's been in shutdown
and basically I think it's like building
a new machine again the all the
detectors have been revamped the LHC
itself all the magnet have been tested
and connections between the magnets
tested they've put in new systems to try
and guarantee that when the beam goes
around it's it doesn't stray off and
cause quenches they're about ready to go
they're ready to rock and roll it's run
two yeah and this run should go for a
few years now so run one which was the
run from 2010 to 2012 they managed to
get the beam energy up to four TV per
beam so eight TV where they they Collide
in the in the detectors now they're
managing to get it up to 6 and a half TV
per beam so 13 TV uh Collision so that's
a what 40 or 50% increase in in energy
with that comes all sorts of benefits
and also they've managed they're hoping
to increase what's known as a Luminosity
the number of collisions per second that
will be detected has gone from something
like if I remember my numbers right from
before 600 million a second up to over a
billion a second now so you've got many
more collisions at much higher energies
that means you're you're potentially
probing a new region of the energy space
that's available to create new particles
supp the key thing that they'll
initially be trying to do is make sure
that they've understood the higs the
higs field itself which is the field
that's responsible for the masses of the
fundamental particles we've discovered
the higs but it's like going into a gold
mine and finding a nugget of gold you
won't then just leave it there and and
or take it home and say that's it you're
now going to try and explore all the
properties you know about the higs and
so one of the big questions would be is
the higs that we see the only higs are
there other higs particles that might be
that might be there that come from uh
beyond the standard model of particle
physics or if there aren't then can we
test the higs that's there to such a
degree that we we think we know what how
it should Decay with the standard model
so we can by looking at more and more
events of the higs decaying we can
actually test you know to much more
Precision whether or not the standard
model is fitting the data run one gave
us the higs so presumably the energy
levels were right we hit the sweet spot
that we needed to be smashing at the
right powers and speeds to show us the
higs now that they're juicing it up and
smashing things even harder are they not
moving away from that sweet spot no no
it will include that spot it's it's that
they've just got much more energy so 18
TV was enough energy there to actually
produce a higs higs has Decay rapidly 10
to Theus 20 seconds or so they've gone
again and what you pick up is the debris
of the Decay so perhaps you know one of
the most clear-cut signs that they found
was pair of photons shooting out and
four leptons coming out by looking at
the distribution of those and the number
of those they they were able to say this
has come from a higs well having even
more energy just means it's easier to
produce these higs so you'd expect
you're going to produce even more of
them cuz there's all of this extra
energy there that can produce the higs
but what it also has potentially is
imagine there's a higs that at 8 TV we
couldn't produce we didn't have enough
energy to produce that higs that might
be coming from say a super symmetric
extension of the standard model or some
extension then with with a bit of luck
with 13 TV maybe we just enter that
regime where occasionally we can produce
those higs and we'll look for the decay
of those as well for me
it's really an incred thing that had
happened in my lifetime if there's one
then we have a real issue which I don't
think we've touched on and you don't
hear very much about it's called the
hierarchy problem there are different
Mass scales that we experience in
physics the higs has got the mass of 125
G okay that's that's the mass that we
couldn't predict it but that's what it
came out to be 125 something now there's
another natural Mass scale in physics
which is associated with the plank scale
now where is the Hig scale is 125 GV the
plank scale is about 10 to the 18 GV we
don't really understand is why Nature
has done this it corresponds in actual
fact to the fact that the the electro
weak Force the weak force is something
like 10^ 32 * stronger than the force of
gravity why is the force of gravity so
small compared to the to the weak force
or another way of saying it is why is
the mass associated with the higs
particle so much smaller than the
natural plank scale which is the mass
you associate up at the at the
gravitational scale why that is a
problem is that we expect these two to
couple we know the higs has mass it
couples through gravity everything
couples through gravity and it gets
influenced by the mass of the of the of
this heavier particle to such an extent
that actually you expect the mass of the
higs to rise and rise and rise and rise
and Rise until it becomes comparable to
that heavy Mass scale the the fact we
don't see that the fact that there is
only this one higs we see that has this
mass is we why is it like that how come
its mass hasn't gone up to this ultra
high scale a single higs by itself can't
explain it we don't have a nice
mechanism to do it so this is one of the
key reasons why people have gone beyond
the standard model they've introduced
ideas which will actually mean that the
the natural rise of this mass is is
stopped the most well-known example of
this is super symmetry so what happens
with super symmetry is when all the Fons
the electrons the protons Etc all the
quarks start coupling in to and
interacting with the higs and being
driven up driving the higs up to higher
and higher scales through other
interactions with gravity then what you
actually do is you introduce a new set
of particles the super symmetric
partners of all of these electrons and
quarks and they come in in such a way
that they actually cancel off all of
these contributions they exactly cancel
them off so as long as super symmetry
holds these contributions get canceled
off so all of this rising in the
effective mass of the higs gets gets
brought down again because every rise
due to say an electron gets actually
compensated by by the electron its super
symmetric partner and it brings it back
down and this is a way of then
stabilizing the mass of the higs but the
problem is it may not be a problem with
a bit of Lu the LC will find something
we haven't seen any evidence yet of
super symmetry right the what we found
is all perfectly consistent with the
standard model so one of the things
we've we've already established by the
fact that we haven't seen any evidence
of these super symmetric particles at
the moment that already puts a um a
lower bound on the mass that these
particles can have we're we've already
reached energy scales of of 8 TV or so
which means that the super symmetric
particles must have masses at least
above that energy scale remember e equal
mc² the idea that we're doing here is
that we're colliding the protons the
protons are annihilating and the the
energy that's released is then sort of
redistributed into new particles somehow
all that energy could get redistributed
into a pair of super symmetric particles
then we know that that that pair would
have to have a a mass of order at least
of order at TV or so otherwise we would
have already seen them there would have
already been enough energy in the
collision and that that isn't so we have
to go to higher energies in order to be
able to hopefully probe the regime where
these heavier particles are existing so
as long as the heavier particles aren't
too heavy compared to the 13 and A2 TV
then we should be able to produce them
so what happens paby of data comes out
it goes down these cables here it goes
all the way out it goes downstairs and
it goes into this this room that's full
of electronics the electronics brings it
all in and then it filters it makes very
fast decision and says I like this I
don't like that and it throws away the
vast majority of it it really makes you
feel like you're really in the heart of
of this machine now I mean of course
where where we stood now you wouldn't be
able to stand when this thing's on too
much radiation flying around too many
particles that could see