The Higgs boson, back to the basics - YouTube

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(29803) The Higgs boson, back to the basics - YouTube

Europe physicists plan to build the next large, 91-kilometer particle collider

Good news!

"Particle physicists in Europe intend to build a 91-kilometer-long circular collider—the largest accelerator ever—to smash electrons into positrons, officials at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, announced today in an online press conference. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) would be completed by the mid-2040s, after CERN’s current atom smasher, the 27-kilometer-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), winds down. It would cost 15 billion Swiss francs, or about $19 billion—and it might pave the way for a much more powerful, and expensive, successor. ...

The new machine, officially the FCC-ee, would actually be the first of two new accelerators. It would occupy a huge new tunnel at CERN and smash electrons into positrons at energies up to 0.365 tera-electron volts (TeV), generating, among other things, large numbers of Higgs bosons. The Higgs, discovered in 2012 by the LHC, anchors physicists’ explanation of how fundamental particles get their mass. Although the FCC-ee’s collision energy would be lower than the LHC’s 13.6 TeV, its electron-positron collisions would be cleaner than the LHC’s proton-proton collisions, enabling physicists to study the Higgs in unprecedented detail. ..."

It’s official: Europe physicists plan to build 91-kilometer particle collider | Science | AAAS

Independent measurement strengthens the case for toponium

Amazing stuff!

"An independent measurement by the CMS experiment at the LHC confirms the existence of toponium, a bound state of a top quark and its antiquark, with a statistical significance exceeding five standard deviations. This finding establishes toponium as the most massive composite particle observed and enhances understanding of the strong nuclear force."

"... The first hints of toponium appeared in searches for heavy Higgs-boson-like particles that could decay into a top quark–antiquark pair. An unexpected excess of collision events was observed at a mass close to twice the mass of the top quark, which is more characteristic of a bound state rather than a new fundamental particle. Detailed studies by the CMS and ATLAS experiments confirmed this excess using events in which both top quarks decay into leptons (electrons or muons).

The new CMS study approaches the problem from a different angle, examining events in which one top quark decays into a bottom quark, a charged lepton and a neutrino while the other decays into quarks that produce sprays, or "jets," of particles. ...

These new techniques proved highly effective. They resulted in the observation of an excess with a statistical significance of more than five standard deviations ... The result provides a new, statistically independent confirmation of toponium production.

"Toponium is heavier than the heaviest known atomic nucleus, oganesson, making it the most massive bound state ever observed," ..."

From the abstract:

"A search is presented for top quark-antiquark (t¯t) bound states near the t¯t

 production threshold, in final states with a single electron or muon and jets. The study uses proton-proton collision data at √s= 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb

−1. The analysis examines the relative velocity between the top quark and antiquark, along with two angular observables sensitive to the parity and spin of the t¯t system. A significant excess of events is observed relative to the standard model prediction for t¯t production calculated at next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. The excess corresponds to an observed cross section of 5.1 ± 0.9pb and is consistent with a simplified model of a color-singlet pseudoscalar toponium motivated by nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics. The result provides an independent confirmation of the excess reported in the dilepton channel."

Independent measurement strengthens the case for toponium

Observation of a pseudoscalar excess at the top quark pair production threshold in the single lepton channel (open access)

CERN accepts $1bn from private donors towards Future Circular Collider

Good news!

"The CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva has received $1bn from private donors towards the construction of the Future Circular Collider (FCC). The cash marks the first time in the lab’s 72-year history that individuals and philanthropic foundations have agreed to support a major CERN project. If built, the FCC would be the successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where the Higgs boson was discovered. ..."

CERN accepts $1bn in private cash towards Future Circular Collider – Physics World "Mark Thomson takes the reins at the CERN particle-physics lab, which recently received $1bn in private donations for its next collider project"

CERN: Antimatter Explained - Ep. 1

Recommendable!

LHC sets a new world record of luminosity in 2025!

Good news! The physicists at CERN seem to be very excited!

High-intensity bunches for the HL-LHC

Recommendable!

A quantum leap for antimatter measurements

Amazing stuff!

"In a breakthrough for antimatter research, the BASE collaboration at CERN has kept an antiproton—the antimatter counterpart of a proton—oscillating smoothly between two different quantum states for almost a minute while trapped. The achievement ... marks the first demonstration of an antimatter quantum bit, or qubit, and paves the way for substantially improved comparisons between the behavior of matter and antimatter. ...

The BASE experiment studies antiprotons produced at CERN’s antimatter factory by storing them in electromagnetic Penning traps and feeding them one by one into a second multi-trap system to, among other things, measure and change their spin states. Using this set-up, the BASE collaboration has previously been able to show that the magnitudes of the magnetic moments of the proton and antiproton are identical within a just few parts-per-billion. Any slight difference in their magnitudes would break charge-parity-time symmetry and point to new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics.

However, this previous result was based on an incoherent spectroscopy technique in which the quantum transitions were disturbed by magnetic field fluctuations and measurement interference. In a substantial upgrade of the experiment, these decoherence mechanisms were suppressed and eliminated, culminating in the first coherent spectroscopy of an antiproton spin. The BASE team has now accomplished this for a period—called spin coherence time—of 50 seconds. 

“This represents the first antimatter qubit and opens up the prospect of applying the entire set of coherent spectroscopy methods to single matter and antimatter systems in precision experiments,” explains BASE spokesperson Stefan Ulmer. “Most importantly, it will help BASE to perform antiproton moment measurements in future experiments with 10- to 100-fold improved precision.” ..."

From the abstract:

"Coherent quantum transition spectroscopy is a powerful tool in metrology, quantum information processing, magnetometry and precision tests of the standard model. It was applied with great success in proton and deuteron magnetic moment measurements, which culminated in maser spectroscopy with sub-parts-per-trillion resolution and many other experiments at the forefront of physics. All of these experiments were performed on macroscopic ensembles of particles, whereas the coherent spectroscopy of a ‘free’ single nuclear spin has, to our knowledge, never been reported before.

Here we demonstrate coherent quantum transition spectroscopy of the spin of a single antiproton stored in a cryogenic Penning-trap system. We apply a multi-trap technique, detect the antiproton spin state using the continuous Stern–Gerlach effect and transport the particle to the homogeneous magnetic field of a precision trap (PT). Here we induce the coherent dynamics and analyse the result by quantum-projection measurements in the analysis trap (AT).

We observe, for the first time, Rabi oscillations of an antiproton spin and achieve in time-series measurements spin-inversion probabilities greater than 80% at spin coherence times of about 50 s. Scans of single-particle spin resonances show inversions greater than 70%, at transition linewidths 16 times narrower than in previous measurements, limited by cyclotron frequency measurement decoherence. This achievement marks a notable step towards at least tenfold improved tests of matter/antimatter symmetry using proton and antiproton magnetic moments."

A quantum leap for antimatter measurements | symmetry magazine

Coherent spectroscopy with a single antiproton spin (open access)

Fig. 1: Experimental set-up.

Elusive romance of top-quark matter/antimatter pairs observed and confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider

Amazing stuff! When physicists become romantics! We are all human, all too human! (pardon my possible abuse of Friedrich Nietzsche) 😊

So under some special circumstances matter and antimatter do not annihilate each other instantly?

"An unforeseen feature in proton-proton collisions previously observed by the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has now been confirmed by its sister experiment, ATLAS. The result, reported yesterday at the European Physical Society’s High-Energy Physics conference in Marseille, suggests that top quarks—the heaviest and shortest-lived of all the elementary particles—can momentarily pair up with their antimatter counterparts to produce a “quasi-bound-state” called toponium. Further input based on complex theoretical calculations of the strong nuclear force—called quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—will enable physicists to understand the true nature of this elusive dance. ..."

Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at the LHC | symmetry magazine "The CMS and ATLAS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have observed an unforeseen feature in the behaviour of top quarks that suggests that these heaviest of all elementary particles form a fleeting union."

Elusive romance of top-quark pairs observed at the LHC (original press release by CERN)

LHC near-miss collisions turn lead into gold

Here is more detail and background by scientists on their Midas touch experiment!

I guess, I have so far missed the critical part of this experiment: Gold was produced not be a direct collision of atoms, but by a near miss of atoms.

"... the ALICE experiment examined the Midas touch happening inside the Large Hadron Collider: lead ions transmuting into thallium, mercury and gold.

Scientists have been able to transform heavy elements into gold using particle accelerators since the 1940s. This result was unique because it was the first time scientists had seen new chemical elements appearing in a type of collision in which the two nuclei never actually came into contact—a Midas touch without the touch.  ...

ALICE is designed to study quark-gluon plasma, the hottest and densest form of matter in the universe. ...

But only head-on lead-lead collisions in the LHC have the energy to produce a quark-gluon plasma. The majority of particle interactions during the LHC’s lead-ion run—more than 98%—result from what are actually near misses. 

In those cases, even though the two nuclei never touch, strange things can still happen.

While lead atoms are neutral, the lead ions inside the LHC have been stripped of all their electrons so that only the bare nuclei collide. This means there is nothing to balance out the ions’ 82 protons, whose whopping positive charge generates an extremely strong electromagnetic field. This field is even more concentrated by the LHC’s extreme speeds and effects of Einstein’s special relativity, which compresses the ions into pancakes.

“This compression is so strong that the resulting magnetic and electric fields are the strongest known in the universe, although they act only over very short times,” ...

When two lead ions cross paths, their electromagnetic fields can produce photons. If a photon from one lead nucleus is absorbed by the other lead nucleus, it can pop out several neutrons and—if the energy is high enough—protons.

Losing neutrons only changes the isotope of the lead (that is, they are still lead nuclei but have a new atomic weight). But losing protons fundamentally transforms the lead into an entirely new element. One lost proton transforms lead into thallium; two lost protons, mercury; and three lost protons, gold. ..."

LHC near-miss collisions turn lead into gold | symmetry magazine "In a recent study, ALICE scientists measured the way that lead ions colliding in the LHC sometimes transform into gold and other new nuclei. "

Detecting the conversion of lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN

Has the ancient dream of alchemy finally coming true?

"... the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). ..."

"In a paper published in Physical Review Journals, the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Transforming the base metal lead into the precious metal gold was a dream of medieval alchemists. This long-standing quest, known as chrysopoeia, may have been motivated by the observation that dull grey, relatively abundant lead is of a similar density to gold ...

Though gold has been artificially produced in this way before, the ALICE collaboration has now measured the transmutation of lead into gold by a new mechanism involving near-miss collisions between lead nuclei at the LHC.

Extremely high-energy collisions between lead nuclei at the LHC can create quark–gluon plasma, a hot and dense state of matter that is thought to have filled the universe around a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, giving rise to the matter we now know. ..."

From the abstract:

"The first measurements of proton emission accompanied by neutron emission in the electromagnetic dissociation (EMD) of 208 Pb nuclei in the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider are presented. The EMD protons and neutrons emitted at very forward rapidities are detected by the proton and neutron zero degree calorimeters of the ALICE experiment. The emission cross sections of zero, one, two, and three protons accompanied by at least one neutron were measured in ultraperipheral  208

 Pb −208 Pb collisions at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=5.02TeV. The 0p and 3p cross sections are described by the RELDIS model within their measurement uncertainties, while the 1p and 2p cross sections are underestimated by the model by 17–25%. According to this model, these 0p, 1p, 2p, and 3p cross sections are associated, respectively, with the production of various isotopes of Pb, Tl, Hg, and Au in the EMD of  208 Pb. The cross sections of the emission of a single proton accompanied by the emission of one, two, or three neutrons in EMD were also measured. The data are significantly overestimated by the RELDIS model, which predicts that the (1p,1n), (1p,2n), and (1p,3n) cross sections are very similar to the cross sections for the production of the thallium isotopes  206,205,204 Tl ."

ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the Large Hadron Collider

ALICE detects the conversion of lead into gold at the LHC (original news release) "Near-miss collisions between high-energy lead nuclei at the LHC generate intense electromagnetic fields that can knock out protons and transform lead into fleeting quantities of gold nuclei"

Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at √𝑠𝑁⁢𝑁=5.02 TeV (open access)

Supercolliders: Four Ways Engineers Aim to Break Physics

Very recommendable! Notice how China is catching up in this area too!

"In particle physics, the smallest problems often require the biggest solutions [and gigantic machines]."

Supercolliders: Four Ways Engineers Aim to Break Physics - IEEE Spectrum "A quarkless supercollider may finally shed light on dark matter"

The Standard Model of particle physics is the current best theory of all the understood matter and forces in our universe (except gravity). The model works extremely well, but scientists also know that it is incomplete. The next generation of supercolliders might give a glimpse at what’s beyond the Standard Model.

FCC-ee would be a 91-km ring spanning underneath Switzerland and France, near the current Large Hadron Collider.

One of the proposed locations for the CEPC is near the northern port city of Qinhuangdao, where the 100 km circumference collider would be buried underground.

A new piece in the matter-antimatter symmetry puzzle

Amazing stuff!

"Yesterday, at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference taking place in La Thuile, Italy, the LHCb collaboration at CERN reported a new milestone in our understanding of the subtle yet profound differences between matter and antimatter. In its analysis of large quantities of data produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the international team found overwhelming evidence that particles known as baryons, such as the protons and neutrons that make up atomic nuclei, are subject to a mirror-like asymmetry in nature’s fundamental laws that causes matter and antimatter to behave differently. The discovery provides new ways to address why the elementary particles that make up matter fall into the neat patterns described by the Standard Model of particle physics, and to explore why matter apparently prevailed over antimatter after the Big Bang. ...."

From the abstract:

"The Standard Model of particle physics, the theory of particles and interactions at the smallest scale, predicts that matter and antimatter interact differently due to violation of the combined symmetry of charge conjugation (C) and parity (P). Charge conjugation transforms particles into their antimatter particles, while the parity transformation inverts spatial coordinates. This prediction applies to both mesons, which consist of a quark and an antiquark, and baryons, which are composed of three quarks.

However, despite having been discovered in various meson decays, CP violation has yet to be observed in baryons, the type of matter that makes up the observable Universe.

This article reports a study of the decay of the beauty baryon Λ0b to the pK−π+π− final state and its CP-conjugated process, using data collected by the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider beauty) experiment at CERN.

The results reveal significant asymmetries between the decay rates of the Λ0b baryon and its CP-conjugated antibaryon, marking the first observation of CP violation in baryon decays, thus demonstrating the different behaviour of baryons and antibaryons.

In the Standard Model, CP violation arises from the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa mechanism, while new forces or particles beyond the Standard Model could provide additional contributions. This discovery opens a new path to search for physics beyond the Standard Model."

A new piece in the matter-antimatter puzzle | symmetry magazine

Observation of charge-parity symmetry breaking in baryon decays (open access)

Quark-gluon plasma Explained - Ep. 1/2

Recommendable!

CERN to end cooperation agreements with Russian-based researchers

Good news! Hopefully, other Western research institutions will follow! Make Russian scientists pariahs!

Will the all too lethargic and apathetic intelligentsia in Russia finally oust their megalomaniac and war criminal Putin the Terrible!

"The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known widely as Cern, has confirmed that it will suspend access to its state-of-the-art facilities for roughly 500 scientists affiliated with Russian institutions from 30 November 2024. Cern is an intergovernmental organisation that operates the world’s largest particle accelerator on the border of France and Switzerland. ..."

Cern to end cooperation agreements with Russian-based researchers | News | Chemistry World

CERN: Moving forward with High-Luminosity LHC: a new Superconducting system is taking shape

Good news! Recommendable!

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider provides world’s first observation of quantum entanglement in quarks

Amazing stuff! It seems this discovery is largely based on a retrospective study of historical data.

"... Entanglement has been observed in electrons, streams of photons, molecules and even across many atoms.

The new study, published in Nature, reports the highest energy observation of entanglement.

It uses data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ATLAS collaboration. The results were later confirmed by another experiment using the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector at the LHC. ..."

"... The ATLAS and CMS teams observed quantum entanglement between a top quark and its antimatter counterpart. The observations are based on a recently proposed method to use pairs of top quarks produced at the LHC as a new system to study entanglement.

The top quark is the heaviest known fundamental particle. It normally decays into other particles before it has time to combine with other quarks, transferring its spin and other quantum traits to its decay particles. Physicists observe and use these decay products to infer the top quark’s spin orientation.

To observe entanglement between top quarks, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations selected pairs of top quarks from data from proton–proton collisions that took place at an energy of 13 teraelectronvolts during the second run of the LHC, between 2015 and 2018. In particular, they looked for pairs in which the two quarks are simultaneously produced with low particle momentum relative to each other. This is where the spins of the two quarks are expected to be strongly entangled.

The existence and degree of spin entanglement can be inferred from the angle between the directions in which the electrically charged decay products of the two quarks are emitted. By measuring these angular separations and correcting for experimental effects that could alter the measured values, the ATLAS and CMS teams each observed spin entanglement between top quarks with a statistical significance larger than five standard deviations. ..."

From the abstract:

"Entanglement is a key feature of quantum mechanics, with applications in fields such as metrology, cryptography, quantum information and quantum computation4. It has been observed in a wide variety of systems and length scales, ranging from the microscopic to the macroscopic. However, entanglement remains largely unexplored at the highest accessible energy scales. Here we report the highest-energy observation of entanglement, in top–antitop quark events produced at the Large Hadron Collider, using a proton–proton collision dataset with a centre-of-mass energy of √s = 13 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 140 inverse femtobarns (fb)−1 recorded with the ATLAS experiment. Spin entanglement is detected from the measurement of a single observable D, inferred from the angle between the charged leptons in their parent top- and antitop-quark rest frames. The observable is measured in a narrow interval around the top–antitop quark production threshold, at which the entanglement detection is expected to be significant. It is reported in a fiducial phase space defined with stable particles to minimize the uncertainties that stem from the limitations of the Monte Carlo event generators and the parton shower model in modelling top-quark pair production. The entanglement marker is measured to be D = −0.537 ± 0.002 (stat.) ± 0.019 (syst.) for \(340\,{\rm{GeV}} < {m}_{t\bar{t}} < 380\,{\rm{GeV}}\). The observed result is more than five standard deviations from a scenario without entanglement and hence constitutes the first observation of entanglement in a pair of quarks and the highest-energy observation of entanglement so far."

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider provides world’s first observation of quantum entanglement in quarks "Smashing protons together at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has led to the first observation of quantum entanglement of quarks."

LHC experiments at CERN observe quantum entanglement at the highest energy yet (original news release) "The results open up a new perspective on the complex world of quantum physics"

Observation of quantum entanglement with top quarks at the ATLAS detector (open access)

Fig. 1: Detector-level results.

First observation of electron and muon interactions with neutrinos at Large Hadron Collider

Amazing stuff!

FASER was apparently the first collider (or human created artificial source) where neutrinos were detected in 2023 (Source).

"The interactions have the highest neutrino energy ever detected from a human-generated source and could help answer fundamental questions about the universe including why there is more matter than antimatter. ...

So far, neutrino cross sections – the probability that a neutrino will interact with a target particle – had not been measured except at low energies. ...

Researchers used the Forward Search Experiment (somehow given the acronym FASER) at the LHC on the Swiss-French border to achieve the first high-energy interactions of electron and muon neutrinos. ...

The FASERν is an emulsion detector made up of 730 layers of alternating tungsten plates and emulsion films. The detector weighs a tonne. ..."

From the abstract:

"The first results of the study of high-energy electron neutrino (𝜈𝑒) and muon neutrino (𝜈𝜇) charged-current interactions in the FASER⁢𝜈 emulsion-tungsten detector of the FASER experiment at the LHC are presented. A 128.8 kg subset of the FASER⁢𝜈 volume was analyzed after exposure to 9.5  fb−1 of √𝑠=13.6  TeV 𝑝⁢𝑝 data. Four (eight) 𝜈𝑒 (𝜈𝜇) interaction candidate events are observed with a statistical significance of 5.2⁢𝜎 (5.7⁢𝜎). This is the first direct observation of 𝜈𝑒 interactions at a particle collider and includes the highest-energy 𝜈𝑒 and 𝜈𝜇 ever detected from an artificial source. The interaction cross section per nucleon 𝜎/𝐸𝜈 is measured over an energy range of 560–1740 GeV (520–1760 GeV) for 𝜈𝑒 (𝜈𝜇) to be (1.2+0.8−0.7)×10−38  cm2 GeV−1 [(0.5±0.2)×10−38  cm2 GeV−1], consistent with standard model predictions. These are the first measurements of neutrino interaction cross sections in those energy ranges."

First observation of electron and muon interactions with “ghost particle” neutrinos at Large Hadron Collider "CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has provided the first direct measurement of electron- and muon-neutrino interaction rates."

Neutrino interaction rates measured at unprecedented energies (original news release) "A team including researchers from the Laboratory for High Energy Physics at the University of Bern has successfully measured the interaction rates of neutrinos at unprecedented energies using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. A better understanding of these elusive elementary particles can help answer the question of why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe."

First Measurement of 𝜈𝑒 and 𝜈𝜇 Interaction Cross Sections at the LHC with FASER’s Emulsion Detector (no public access)

Electron-positron pair-plasma jets like from black holes and neutron stars are now generated at CERN

Amazing stuff!

"... These relativistic jets, as they’re called, are thought to contain a plasma made of electrons and their antimatter equivalent, positrons. ..."

"... That experiment generated extremely high yields of quasi-neutral electron-positron pair beams using more than 100 billion protons from the SPS accelerator. Each proton carries a kinetic energy that is 440 times larger than its resting energy. Because of such large momentum, when the proton smashes an atom, it has sufficient energy to release its internal constituents—quarks and gluons—which then immediately recombine to produce a shower that ultimately decays into electrons and positrons.

In other words, the beam they generated in the lab had enough particles to start behaving like a true astrophysical plasma. ..."

"... Relativistic beams of electron–positron pairs can be created in several ways at different types of laboratories, including high-power laser facilities. However, none of the existing ways can produce the number of electron–positron pairs that is required to sustain a plasma – a state of matter in which the constituent particles are very loosely connected. Without sustaining the plasma, researchers cannot investigate how these analogues of black hole jets change as they move through a laboratory equivalent of the interstellar medium. This investigation is key to explaining observations from ground- and space-based telescopes. ..."

From the abstract:

"Relativistic electron-positron plasmas are ubiquitous in extreme astrophysical environments such as black-hole and neutron-star magnetospheres, where accretion-powered jets and pulsar winds are expected to be enriched with electron-positron pairs. Their role in the dynamics of such environments is in many cases believed to be fundamental, but their behavior differs significantly from typical electron-ion plasmas due to the matter-antimatter symmetry of the charged components. So far, our experimental inability to produce large yields of positrons in quasi-neutral beams has restricted the understanding of electron-positron pair plasmas to simple numerical and analytical studies, which are rather limited. We present the first experimental results confirming the generation of high-density, quasi-neutral, relativistic electron-positron pair beams using the 440 GeV/c beam at CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator. Monte Carlo simulations agree well with the experimental data and show that the characteristic scales necessary for collective plasma behavior, such as the Debye length and the collisionless skin depth, are exceeded by the measured size of the produced pair beams. Our work opens up the possibility of directly probing the microphysics of pair plasmas beyond quasi-linear evolution into regimes that are challenging to simulate or measure via astronomical observations."

Plasma fireballs from black holes are now being made here on Earth Supermassive black holes have been known to belch gigantic beams of plasma into space – and now scientists have managed to recreate these fireballs in a lab at CERN.

Bringing black hole jets down to Earth The Fireball collaboration has used CERN’s HiRadMat facility to produce an analogue of the jets of matter and antimatter that stream out of some black holes and neutron stars

Pair plasmas found in deep space can now be generated in the lab An international team of scientists has developed a novel way to experimentally produce plasma ‘fireballs’ on Earth.

Laboratory realization of relativistic pair-plasma beams (open access)

HOW IT WORKS: A proton (far left) from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator at CERN impinges on carbon nuclei (small gray spheres). This produces a shower of various elementary particles, including a large number of neutral pions (orange spheres). As the unstable neutral pions decay, they emit two high-energy gamma rays (yellow squiggly arrows). These gamma rays then interact with the electric field of Tantalum nuclei (large gray spheres), generating electron and positron pairs and resulting in the novel electron-positron fireball plasma. Because of these cascade effects, a single proton can generate many electrons and positrons, making this process of pair plasma production extremely efficient.

Fig. 1: Experimental setup.

CERN: Particle detectors: seeing the invisible

Recommendable!