Smashing the Universe to get the recipe: A physicist’s visit to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN
Understanding how the Universe works at small scales has huge knock on impacts on how the larger Universe forms and reacts. For example knowing if Dark Matter is a slow heavy particle or a fast light particle fundamentally dictates if the universe formed by small bits of matter attracting together into larger structures over time (Lambda-CDM model) for the heavy particles, but would be more of a pancake model where the universe starts of as a large mass that breaks down into smaller objects like the Milky Way for the smaller and faster particles. It is this linking of large and small in the Universe that really illustrates the intimate interlinked nature of Science in every part of our lives and gives us one of the most important questions going.
How did our universe begin and physically evolve?
These are just two of the many questions physicists at CERN are working towards giving us the definitive answers for.
Following my trip to Culham I was given the opportunity to visit this state-of-the-art European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. The University of Bristol posted an invitation online for anyone interested in a trip to CERN. 12 hours later, the entire trip was full. I…
