From protons to electrons to atomic
nuclei, physicists love smashing tiny stuff together. And soon, they may have an
even better way to get their kicks.
A new experiment raises prospects for
building a particle accelerator that collides particles called muons, which
could lead to smashups of higher energies than any engineered before. Scientists
with the Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment, or MICE, have cooled a beam of muons, a necessary part of preparing the particles for use
in a collider, the team reports online February 5 in Nature.
To study matter at its most fundamental
level, physicists smash particles together at high energies and filter through
the wreckage. The strategy has revealed previously unknown particles, such as
the Higgs boson
(SN: 4/4/12), discovered at the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, in 2012.
That 27-kilometer collider is already
the biggest machine ever built. To keep searching for new particles, scientists
must go to higher energies. The higher a collision’s energy, the heavier
particles scientists might be able to discover. Getting to higher energies requires a more
powerful accelerator. So scientists are planning even bigger, badder —
and pricier —
versions
of current colliders (SN: 1/22/19).