Duke researchers key in Large Hadron Collider tests The future
of physics is being shaped in a concrete tunnel 574 feet beneath
the border of France and Switzerland—and Duke is playing an
important role. Professors and students from the University are
contributing to the progress being made at the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator. The
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) built the LHC
in order to test various theories of high-energy physics and
especially to check for the existence of the Higgs boson—an
elementary particle often called the “God particle” by the media
due to its hypothesized importance in explaining the Big Bang
Theory. “During the past 20 years we have reached an impasse.
Established theory can explain all measurements, but it does not
explain why our universe on the whole looks the way it does,”
said James B. Duke professor of physics Berndt Mueller. “The
hope is that the LHC will provide the data that are needed to
decide what the correct ex