What are the experiments searching for?

The LHC experiments will search for new discoveries in the head-on collisions of protons with extraordinarily high energy. These collisions, which will happen 40 million times a second, will recreate the conditions present at the birth of the universe.

Physicists from the United States and around the world will use the data from these collisions to learn about the basic forces that have shaped our universe and that will determine its fate. Among the mysteries scientists hope to solve are the origin of mass, the existence of extra dimensions of space and microscopic black holes, and the composition of dark matter. Most exciting will be the completely unknown surprises -- new processes and particles that would transform our understanding of energy