The CERN Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. At one of its collision points sits ATLAS detector, a massive instrument designed to record the particles produced when protons collide at nearly the speed of light.
These collisions create many particles, some of which are unstable and decay into other particles almost immediately. In 2012, the ATLAS experiment and CMS detector famously co-discovered the Higgs boson, confirming a key piece of the Standard Model of particle physics.
However, scientists suspect that unknown particles may exist beyond the Standard Model. Some theories predict long-lived particles that travel a short distance before decaying. When they decay away from the center of the detector, they create a distinctive pattern called a displaced vertex.
In this project, volunteers examine visualizations of real ATLAS collision events and help identify possible displaced vertices and other unusual features. Human pattern recognition can sometimes spot patterns that algorithms miss, helping researchers refine their analysis tools and potentially uncover hints of new physics.
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