Re-writing physics

CMS is a general-purpose detector. This means that not only is it designed with particular hypotheses in mind, but also with the aim to study whatever happens when particles collide at high energies, even if the results are like nothing we expect. If unexpected phenomena do occur, we plan to be ready for them. Any new particles produced at such high energies are likely to decay into particles that we know well and that CMS can detect, or, if they don’t interact with detector material, that can be inferred through the “missing energy” used up in making them. In this way, whatever physics emerges at such high energies, CMS is in an ideal position to study it.

The Higgs mechanism and speculative theories like supersymmetry are exciting physics and will be scrutinised and tested at CMS. But if they are not correct and we instead see new, interesting and different phenomena, this could launch a revolution in physics, sending theorists back to the drawing board and challenging our ideas about the world at the most basic level.