LHCb Detector

WOW! Today was so exciting. Visiting the LHCb (Large Hadron Collider Beauty) detector (it is part of the LHC and is being used to find b particles, which means particles that contain the beauty quark).

This amazing detector is so large and includes many parts. The amazing part is that it is trying to detect these particles that only last for a manner of pico seconds (about a million of a millionth of a second or 0.000000000001 s). The system includes a giant magnet, VeLo (which measures the distance between the collision point of the proton beam and the point where the beauty quarks decay, to an accuracy of a 100th of a millimetre), Cherenkov detectors, trackers (inner and outer), electromagnetic calorimeters and a muon detection system.

From the 10 million proton collisions every second, LHCb records the data from just 2000. By studying the slight difference in decay between the beauty quark and its antiparticle to unpreceded precision, LHCb is shedding light on one of the Universe's most fundamental mystery, The Big Bang. LHCb is on the lookout for signs of a whole new family of particles that could make up some of the dark matter that pervades the Universe. This mystery matter makes galaxies spin faster than expected and deviates the light from stars.

At the moment cosmic rays provide the team with small amounts of data to callibrate the experiment. Hopefully in October, when the LHC is reactivated, there will be a lot more data and information to provide about these amazing particles!