Is the Standard Model isolated?

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN revealed the Higgs boson in 2012, but has led to no comparable discovery since. It is worth asking what we hope to learn from the new data coming soon - and indeed from any particle physics experiment in the near future

In CERN, on the outskirts of Geneva, preparations are well underway for the next spate of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We are planning for a record year, starting in June. Last year was a bounteous one, but in 2017 we expect even more collisions, at the same record-breaking high energy.

The detectors which will record the data have been under maintenance and refurbishment. Most notably, the vertex detector in the centre of the CMS experiment has been entirely replaced. The vertex detector is made of silicon; the electrons in the material only need a small nudge from a passing charged-particle to escape and carry an electric current. Those tiny currents allow us to track the path of the particle, and thus work out where it originated - the vertex. The vertex detector is a vital and complex component of the experiment. You can see a video of the (very careful) operation to insert the new one, below.