• Question: What kind of particles has the Hadron Collider created already?

    Asked by to Clara on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Clara Nellist

      Clara Nellist answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Hi @olliebiggs. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has now created every particle we know about. This includes all the standard ones like electrons, protons and neutrons – these are the the particles that make up the atoms of everything around us. The last two, protons and neutrons, are actually made up of smaller particles called quarks and gluons. We also have muons and taus, these are like the electron but heavier. And a couple more force carrying particles called W, Z and the Higgs! Oh, and don’t forget neutrinos and antimatter!

      As you can see this is a lot of particles! But we’re actually hoping to make even more that we think might be there, but we haven’t seen yet. To do this we need to make the LHC run at n even higher energy to be able to make all these new particles and understand how they work.

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