During the Spring Festival, what are the scientists of Institute of High Energy of Chinese Academy of Sciences doing?

Finding new particles is the goal pursued by high-energy physicists. An important way to find new particles is to accelerate the particle beam to a high energy close to the speed of light and collide with it. This requires the help of a huge scientific device, which is the collider.

"The experiment we are doing is to use the Beijing Electron Positron Collider to carry out τ-charm physics research and explore the smallest unit of matter." Wei said to him:

Walking into the main control room of the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, the real sand table flashing in the major reconstruction project of the Collider is particularly eye-catching. From the sand table model, BEPC looks like a huge badminton racket, which consists of four parts: injector, storage ring, Beijing spectrometer and Beijing synchrotron radiation device.

The handle of this huge badminton racket is a 202-meter-long linear accelerator, that is, an injector, which provides positive and negative electron beams for the storage ring; The racket frame is an annular accelerator with a circumference of 240 meters, that is, the storage ring, where positive and negative electrons are stored and collided; The Beijing Spectrometer is located at the top of the racket, which is equivalent to the "eye" of the Beijing Electron Positron Collider. It is used to capture the information of secondary charged particles and neutral particles produced by collision and reconstruct the collision process, so as to study the microstructure of matter and uncover the mystery of the universe. The synchrotron radiation device is located around the storage ring and mainly provides synchrotron radiation light for synchrotron radiation research.

Simply put, the Beijing Electron Positron Collider is an experimental device for high-energy physics research, which has been repeating the process of "collision and birth of new particles".

"Once the experiment of the collider begins, it needs to run 24 hours a day, regardless of holidays, until the end of the experiment. During the experiment, we worked night shifts during the day shift, and each shift required at least 26 people. " Wei introduced.

Wei's family also supports overtime during the Spring Festival. "During the Spring Festival, our experiment was running normally. We are on duty according to the work arrangement. This is the work to be done. They know the nature of my work. " Speaking of overtime, Wei is very calm.

Someone once compared the Beijing Electron Positron Collider to a "super particle gun". It works like two cars on different tracks facing each other and accelerating. When the speed is close to the speed of light, adjust the orbit to make them collide at the specified position, and a large number of "fragments" will be produced at this time, and these "fragments" are the secondary particles that physicists want to study.