Imagine a project that has “no predecessor,” because until now, the technology has not existed to study it. This is the case with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Prof. Jim Alexander, physics, is one of almost 2,000 physicists working to push scientific knowledge of the physical world and question the fundamental laws that govern it.

The LHC is the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator that has ever been built. Built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), this particle accelerator — 17 miles in circumference — is located beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. In Sept. 2008, the LHC worked for about a week until it experienced a problem between two superconducting bending magnets. The LHC will be back up and running this month, with some results expected by late December.

When the LHC starts up again, though, it will only run at about half the energy that the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) has already reached. Scientists at Fermilab research high energy physics to question and understand the standard model and related topics. In winter, the LHC will hit the same high that Fermilab did – 2 TeV. One GeV (electron volt) is “the energy contained in the mass of one proton,” Alexander said. (1000 GeV is 1 TeV). In spring, the LHC will run at 7 TeV, where new data will be observed, since no one has yet observed particles at this energy level. The long-range goal is to reach 14 TeV. At this energy, scientists “expect to see something new.”

The LHC will be exploring many questions about the universe. Dark matter and energy, the existence of extra dimensions, the formation of the universe and undiscovered particles are some of the issues being tackled. One particle in particular is the Higgs boson, which has been predicted by the standard model but has yet to been observed. All other particles have been predicted by the standard model have been observed; the Higgs boson is the only one scientists have not observed. With the energy capability of the LHC, the Higgs boson should be produced.

“One of things a lot of us get excited about is dark matter,” Alexander said. “Because that’s a thing, a type of particle, which is definitely not in any present theory, not the standard model, and yet the astrophysicists look out into the universe and say, ‘You know guys there’s all this dark matter out there and we don’t know what it is.’ Of course, we’re hoping when we run the run the LHC and we start to explore physics beyond the boundaries of the standard model that we will be, among other things, exploring dark matter … That’s a tricky business.”

In the field of dark matter, Alexander is specifically researching the question of how the mass of these dark matter particles that go missing can be measured. Using the law of conservation, the mass of the missing particles can be extracted. Although this method would work fine with one missing particle, it gets complicated if the dark matter particles are produced in pairs, which certainly will be the case when this observation occurs at the LHC. If two particles go missing, it is difficult to measure the missing mass with the same principle that was applied before.

“You don’t see them … but you see everything else, can you by process of elimination by which I really mean you add up the energies and momentum of everything that you do see and you know that no matter what the next theory of physics is energy and momentum are going to be conserved so you apply that as a principle and then see if you can extract the data and those principles of energy and momentum conservation the mass of those missing particles.”

Alexander’s career began as an undergraduate who wanted to major in every class that he took. He even was on the path for a philosophy major, until he took physics and knew, “That’s for me.”

After receiving his degree, Alexander worked at the Fermilab through the University of Chicago. There, he studied quarks and gluons. Later, as a postdoc at Stanford University, he discovered a new particle known as Z0. Finally, he made to Cornell University where for the past 20 years he has studied bottom quarks with CLEO at the Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics (LEPP). Throughout his research, he has been looking for something outside of the standard model. “Everything has been consistent with the standard model,” though, said Alexander.

After so many years of working towards — but not finding — the results that have challenged the standard model, Alexander is looking forward to the new results that may come from the LHC.

“For me personally, that’s the kind of thing that makes me get up in the morning … There’s this stuff out there that’s extremely important to the structure of the universe. The evolution of the universe would have been radically different if dark matter hadn’t been there,” he said. “So finding out what it is, is clearly a fundamental endeavor and if we do find out what is, I’ll be very excited.”