Q&A - Mysteries of matter at the LHC

Dr Pippa Wells answers some of your questions on how the LHC will explore these mysteries of matter.
Why can the Brout-Englert-Higgs field give mass to particles? What is the difference between fields, vents and processes? What are the advantages and disadvantages of colliding electrons and positrons? Why are protons sometimes collided instead of lead nuclei? Is there any prospect for experimentalists to study dark matter?

Two years ago, the Higgs Boson was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS experiments. But how precisely does it fill its role as the last missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics?

The Large Hadron Collider will restart in 2015 with almost double the collision energy to test just that. But even then, this theory only accounts for 5% of the Universe, and does not include gravity.Can the LHC shed light on the origin of dark matter? Why is gravity so much weaker than the other forces?

Pippa Wells was the Inner Detector System Project Leader on the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. ATLAS is one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It investigates a wide range of physics, from the search for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter.

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