100 meters Underground on the France Switzerland border the European Organization for nuclear
research CERN has built the largest particle accelerator on our planet
Over its years of operation it has uncovered some of the most exciting and groundbreaking
discoveries in all of physics is there something else happening there something
probing beyond our current understanding of reality have they found anything [Music]
one of the goals of CERN is to understand how the universe is put together and how it functions on
a fundamental level some of the leading theories that attempt to explain the whole of the universe
the theories of everything include higher Dimensions above the three dimensions that we
experience every day these higher dimensions are required for certain fundamental interactions to
occur between the building blocks that these theories claim make up our reality and these
interactions should leave behind Tell-Tale signs in the lower down Dimensions that we
can interact with these signs include detecting the traces of certain short-lived particles as
well as missing energy after certain particles like gravitons migrate to higher dimensions
now scientists with CERN are on the lookout for these specific occurrences it is just a
waiting game to see if evidence of these higher Dimensions is found
what will the implications be for glimpsing these higher dimensions
what might be possible if scientists are able to access and utilize these higher dimensions
during the first moments of the Big Bang both matter and antimatter were created in almost
the exact same quantities but luckily for us there was slightly more matter than anti-matter,
so after these two opposites annihilate each other the universe was left with the small leftover bit
of matter that survived the battle no one really knows why there was more matter than anti-matter
it appears that there was simply an asymmetry in those early moments but antimatter still holds
many Mysteries itself and may hold the keys to understanding much more about our universe which
has led many scientists to try to create and study this bizarre material one of the first goals of
anti-matter researchers was to be able to create anti-matter that they can then study for longer
than a few moments but as the name suggests it is the opposite of matter and as soon as they make
contact they will annihilate each other instantly in a violent explosion scientists are getting
better though and recently at CERN a team was able to create anti-matter and keep it stable for
a total of 15 minutes which is a fantastic Leap Forward in the effectiveness of these experiments
black holes are the ultimate Monsters of the cosmos with their extreme mass and gravitational
pull that will be the end to anything that Ventures too close to its gravitational pull there
are scientists who have predicted that when the Large Hadron Collider smashes together subatomic
particles the energy enforces present will cause black holes to be created in the aftermath and
while this is technically true CERN has said that the black holes that are created will exist on the
quantum level of our universe and will be much too small to have much of an influence or impact
in the macroscopic world this is reassuring, but there are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to
the world of quantum gravity and understanding its workings is still one of the top goals of
modern physics could they be wrong about these minuscule black holes could they grow large
enough to begin acting like a gravitational funnel as their larger counterparts do
[Music]
CERN is also taking a look at one of the longest lived mysteries in the field of physics that still
has no widely accepted answer the presence of Dark Matter scientists know that there
is a huge chunk of mess in our universe that does not interact with lights in ways that we
can detect leading some to believe that it may be made up of minuscule unknown particles that
are prevalent throughout the Universe some of these scientists are working at CERN and have
been hoping for some time that when they smash particles together they will catch a glimpse of
a new particle that can give us the answers they need to finally understand what dark matter is
the leading theories all include some type of microscopic particles that exist
in insane numbers throughout the cosmos while remaining undetectable to our current instruments
there are a number of particles that may be the answer to what dark matter
is but one with the most momentum behind it right now is the mysterious Axion particle
while the standard model currently consists of 17 fundamental particles that make up our universe
there are many more theoretical particles that have yet to be discovered axions are one of the
theoretical particles that have a high probability of appearing in collisions in a particle
accelerator as the power and energy of these machines continue to climb first proposed nearly
50 years ago axions are now one of the candidates for dark matter as the environment during the
early Universe just after the big bang was perfect for a huge number of these particles to be created
two years ago in 2020 there were findings in Tokyo that turned out to be the first direct evidence of
axions scientists at the LHC are now working on specifically engineer tests that have high enough
energy for axions to form allowing the researchers to directly detect them for the first time
accelerators like the ones created by CERN send subatomic particles around and around
until they reach speeds approaching the speed of light before they are
finally directed toward each other and forced to collide in a powerful crash
collisions cause the particles being accelerated to smash open in a tremendous release of energy
sending fundamental particles flying as they Decay into their constituents and allowing scientists
to peer into the subatomic world and study the interactions of the particles as they come out
of these collisions recently while accelerating and colliding protons a particle was released
that scientists weren't exactly expecting protons are typically comprised of two up
quarks and one down Quark but when these protons collided a heavier strange Quark was produced
could this be the evidence of some new physics that hasn't been found before
[Music]
quarks are not the only thing being found in the aftermath of super energetic collisions
quirks come in six different types of flavors up down charm strange top and bottom
while particles consisting of three quarks like protons and neutrons seem to be the most common
type of particles scientists learned that they are not the only ways that quarks can combine
together the LHC has continued to show scientists new types of never-before-seen particles with the
discovery of a new kind of pentaquark and the first tetrach pair in addition to a new type of
tetrach in the last two years many types of exotic new hadrons have been discovered but scientists
are still trying to understand what they are and how they Decay into their constituents
if all of these new particles fit into the standard model what will that mean for the future
of physics can these particles have applications that can benefit Humanity in some way [Music]
over a decade ago in the year 2012 scientists at the Large Hadron Collider made an incredible
Discovery the Higgs boson was found at nearly 50 years after it was first theorized and helped
provide additional evidence to the standard model of particle physics but CERN has yet to
confirm another certain feature of the standard model that has been plaguing scientists for years
Super symmetry one of the accepted but not proven properties of the standard model is that there is
symmetry between fermions and bosons referred to as supersymmetry it predicts partner particles for
all of those already known that helps fill in some of the major gaps in the theory scientists at CERN
have been trying to prove its existence for the past few decades and if they can find concrete
evidence that supersymmetry exists it will be one of the largest scientific discoveries of all time
when will they find evidence pointing them toward an answer
thanks for watching let us know what you think about CERN and its fantastic
discoveries down in the comments below see you next time on Matter!