The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is the world's biggest
atom smasher, may have just made one of the greatest scientific discoveries in modern
memory.
If matter and antimatter existed in equivalent parts after
the Big Bang, they would have annihilated each other into energy. The LHCb research
at CERN's Large Hadron Collider is starting to shed light on this secret.
According to Nine News Australia, the LHC was capable of
detecting a so-called X particle-a particle considered to have existed at the
literal dawn of time. It quite simply was formed mere seconds after the Big
Bang, which gave birth to the universe as we know it.
Researchers working on the LHC stated the discovery of the
extremely unique particles after using machine learning technology. With the
tech, they were able to comb through a ridiculous 13 billion heavy ion
collisions that generate charged particles (basically a "particle
soup").
In that "soup," they were able to detect around
100 individual X particles. They finally published their conclusions in the
journal Physical Review Letters. With the discovery of these particles from the
dawn of time, the researchers hope to shed more light on how the universe truly
began.
However, discovering these particles was no cakewalk for the
scientists, as they had to fully recreate the circumstances of a universe that
was just being born, writes Live Science.
To do so, the resaerchers used the Large Hadron Collider to
make positively charged lead atoms crash into each other at speeds close to the
speed of light. The LHC is able to do this using really powerful
electromagnetic fields to both boost and steer the particles, according to CERN(aka the European Council for Nuclear Research).
Whenever the charged lead atoms smashed into each other,
they geberated a burst of plasma that resembled the "particle soup"
of a young universe. From there, they used the machine learning algorithm to
sift through a ridiculous amount of information.
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