Large Hadron Collider Enables Hunt For ‘God’ Particle To Complete ‘Theory Of Everything’

The UW, led by professors Henry Lubatti in physics and Colin Daly in mechanical engineering, played a central role in designing and fabricating nearly 90,000 tubes that are key to the workings of the Atlas detector. Atlas is one of six particle physics experiments that are part of the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. The scientists are looking for other information that will help them to fill gaps in what they call the Standard Model of particle physics, a framework that explains the fundamental forces of nature. The Standard Model explains the way particle interactions create the strong nuclear force, the electroweak force and electromagnetism, and how those forces work with each other, but aspects of those interactions still are not well understood. The Large Hadron Collider also could lead to better understanding of the fourth fundamental force — gravity — in terms of particle interactions, and help solve the puzzle of why gravity, while perhaps most recognizable to a lay observer, is the weakest of the fundamental forces.