Scientists still have no clues as to what hinders data collection

Nov 29, 2011 14:49 GMT  ·  By

Observations physicists are trying to conduct at the world's largest particle accelerator are hampered by what the team there plastically refers to as UFOs. They say that unidentified falling objects continue to get in the way of the accelerated proton beams, stifling observations.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), hundreds of feet underneath the French-Swiss border. It is capable of accelerating particles to an energy level of 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV) per beam, for a total of 14 TeV combined output.

Collisions conducted here can reveal important insights into the Standard Model of particle physics, the nature of dark matter, supersymmetry and the Higgs boson – the force carrier that allows energy to acquire mass.

In order for these advanced studies to be conducted, two proton beams need to be accelerated in opposite directions in the facility's 27-kilometer (16.7-mile) tunnels. But the aforementioned UFO get in the way somehow, reducing the energy of the beams, and making things more difficult for scientists.

Many physicists at LHC believe that these UFOs are microscopic specs of dust. However, a point of origin for these particles has yet to be identified. Until this issue is solved, the giant installation will not be able to work at full potential.

The particles represent “one of the major known limitations for the performance of the Large Hadron Collider,” LHC physicist Tobias Baer said a recent conference, held in Spain. At this point, the team is hard at work towards identifying the source of the problem, as well as ways of handling it.

The issue is so severe that the UFOs ever triggered so-called beam dumps, which are events that see the LHC shutting down its beams on its own, due to excessive interferences. A clue that experts now have is that most beam dumps occurred in the electric arcs that produce the proton beams themselves.

But this discovery also emphasizes the need for a fix, since producing massive proton beams will be absolutely necessary when the LHC begins conducting collisions at maximum energy levels. At this point, it seems that UFO concentrations increase around injector kicker magnets (MKI).

It could be that MKI direct the UFOs towards the proton beams, but such a phenomenon would only be possible if the particles themselves had an electrical charge. If they sported neutral electrical charges, then the magnetic field would not be able to manipulate them.

“Many additional studies are ongoing to gain a more profound knowledge about the behavior, impact and production mechanism of UFOs,” Baer explained in a paper he and his team presented at the conference, Space reports.