New Atlas

Physics Audio available

CERN's proposed 100-km particle accelerator would run rings around the LHC

Darren Quick January 15, 2019

CERN, the European research organization responsible for operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), has released a report outlining a proposed particle accelerator that would be nearly four times as long and 10 times as powerful as its predecessor.

The proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) would have a circumference of 100 km (62 mi), dwarfing ...

Physics Audio available

Large Hadron Collider upgrades to pave the way for higher energy collisions

Nick Lavars December 4, 2018

Scientists at CERN have switched off the Large Hadron Collider following its second round of experiments, gearing it up for a third run that will see particles smashed together harder than ever before.

The Large Hadron Collider undergoes some earlier upgrades

Physics

Does antimatter fall upwards? New CERN gravity experiments aim to get to the bottom of the matter

Michael Irving November 4, 2018

Physics tells us that a hammer and a feather, dropped in a vacuum, will fall at the same rate. Now, CERN scientists are preparing to drop antimatter in a vacuum chamber to see if gravity affects it the same way it does matter – or if antimatter falls upwards instead.

The ALPHA-g experiment being set up at CERN, which will drop antimatter to see how gravity ...

Physics

Large Hadron Collider: 10 years of pushing the frontiers of physics

Michael Irving September 15, 2018

The Large Hadron Collider has been responsible for some of the most important breakthroughs in scientific history, most notably the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2013. New Atlas is celebrating the 10-year anniversary with a look back at its achievements and what it could help solve in the future.

The Large Hadron Collider turned 10 this week

Physics Audio available

Mini antimatter accelerator to open doors to particle physics mysteries

Michael Irving August 9, 2018

Particle accelerators have plenty to teach us, but these facilities involve kilometers of tunnels and equipment. Now, researchers at Imperial College London have developed a new way to accelerate antimatter particles using common equipment already found in many labs, in a much smaller space.

A simulation of antimatter particles being concentrated and accelerated into a positron beam

Medical

CERN chip enables first 3D color X-ray images of the human body

Michael Irving July 10, 2018

Medical X-ray scans have long been stuck in the black-and-white era. Now Mars Bioimaging has developed a bioimaging scanner that can produce full color, three dimensional images of bones, lipids, and soft tissue, thanks to a sensor chip developed at CERN for use in the Large Hadron Collider.

Using CERN technology, Mars Bioimaging has created the first 3D, color X-ray images of the human ...

Physics

CERN's Large Hadron Collider getting major luminosity upgrade

David Szondy June 17, 2018

After eight years of banging subatomic particles together, CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is getting a major upgrade that, when it goes online in 2026, will increase the collision rates of the LHC by up to a factor of seven and allow around 10 times more data to be collected.

Prototype of a quadrupole magnet for the High-Luminosity LHC project

Physics

CERN scientists get antimatter ready for its first road trip

Michael Irving February 22, 2018

Antimatter is tricky to store and study, since it will vanish in a burst of energy if it touches regular matter. How can you transport something that will annihilate any physical container you place it in? Now, CERN researchers are planning to trap and truck antimatter from one facility to another.

CERN scientists are getting ready to transport antimatter to a new location, using the strange substance ...

Physics

Newly-discovered heavy particle is twice as charming

Michael Irving July 6, 2017

Researchers at CERN have discovered a doubly charming new particle, which has long been theorized to exist. Named Ξcc++(Xicc++), the particle is the first found to contain two heavy quarks, and its confirmation should pave the way to a better understanding of the fundamental forces of physics.

CERN scientists have announced the discovery of a new particle, which contains two heavy "charm" quarks

Science

CERN zaps antimatter with lasers to study its spectrum for the first time

Michael Irving December 19, 2016

Matter’s mysterious twin, antimatter, has become slightly less mysterious, thanks to new research at the CERN particle physics lab. Scientists have measured the optical spectrum of antihydrogen for the first time to check if antimatter behaves as predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Researchers at CERN have studied the spectrum of antihydrogen atoms for the first time, and found ...