Power boost for particle accelerator could unlock physics secrets

The Large Hadron Collider will get a power boost to follow up on the discovery of the Higgs Boson, the so-called "God particle," European physicists say. Work will be ongoing for most of the year with the final result of a particle energy boost from 8 trillion electrovolts, or teraelectronvolts (TeV) to 14 TeV. The discover of the Higgs boson in July 2012 completed the "Standard Model" of physics, the overarching theory of how elementary particles fit together to create all matter in the universe. The upgrade in power may allow the collider to go beyond the Standard Model, scientists say, to uncover evidence of a cosmic concept known as "supersymmetry," which proposes every matter particle has a corresponding force-carrying particle. "The idea now is that with the last missing piece of the Standard Model in place, the search now is for things that go beyond it, primarily supersymmetry," Tony Doyle from the University of Glasgow, a member of the team operating one of the particle detectors at the LHC, told The Independent. "At the moment we separate things that are force carriers and matter particles," he said. "Evidence of supersymmetry would change our whole view of what's happening out there."