From the Higgs particle to the Big Bang

What is the goal?

What is matter made of, what are its basic building blocks? How did the universe come into being and how will it end? Physics has been pursuing these questions since time immemorial. It has found many answers: Matter is made up of elementary particles, including quarks and electrons. Our world was probably created 13.8 billion years ago in a spectacular event known as the Big Bang. Since then, the universe has continued to expand, giving rise to stars, planets, and intelligent life.
But not all the mysteries of the universe have been solved: ominous dark matter and mysterious dark energy seem to be shaping the universe, but what is behind them is unclear. It is also unclear why there seems to be much more matter than antimatter in the universe - a circumstance to which we owe our existence. Could these mysteries be linked to that strangest of elementary particles, the neutrino? Or are they hypothetical, as yet undiscovered elementary particles such as axions or supersymmetry particles? Even for phenomena that are known in principle, there are still many details that need to be clarified: How do superheavy chemical elements form when two stars collide? And where does the extremely energetic cosmic ray that repeatedly hits our planet come from?

What is Helmholtz doing to achieve this goal?

The research program “Matter and Universe” is looking for answers to these questions. One of its guiding principles is the combination of astroparticle physics and astronomy in the field of multi-messenger astronomy, which draws on information from various messengers in space, such as electromagnetic radiation, neutrinos and gravitational waves. Each messenger particle provides different information, and it is only by combining this information that a complete picture can emerge.

Examples of research

The Helmholtz centers play a major role in the experiments at the world's largest particle accelerator, the LHC at CERN in Geneva. There, they are analyzing the Higgs particle discovered in 2012 in detail and are searching in particular for signs of physics beyond the current Standard Model.

The FAIR accelerator complex in Darmstadt, Germany, which is currently under construction, is also designed to answer fundamental questions: the facility will create states of matter as they existed immediately after the Big Bang. And it will reproduce in the laboratory the extreme conditions in neutron stars and supernova explosions - the unimaginable temperatures and pressures required to create elements such as gold and platinum.

In addition, the Helmholtz centers are involved in some of the world's most unusual telescopes: At the South Pole, the IceCube detector detects neutrinos coming from distant corners of space and can provide information about the behavior of massive black holes. In Argentina, the Pierre Auger Observatory searches for extremely fast particles from space. And in a few years, the Cherenkov Telescope Array in Chile and Spain will look for gamma rays, which are preferentially produced in powerful cosmic events, such as the collision of two neutron stars.