Invisible Forces

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is a particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable. Join for a discussion and description of how research within this area and how this affected what we know today.

The Universe is full of invisible forces. Some we are well acquainted with (if you fall out of a tree for example), some are not. One of them forces galaxies and groups of galaxies away from each other, one of them protects you from being destroyed by radiation from far away galaxies whilst also leaving fuzzy signals between channels on your television! Join as we reveal these hidden forces and wonders of physics and hopefully make some sense of it all!

Gravitational waves permeate the Universe at all times and are travelling through you right now. They originate from anything in the Universe (including the Universe itself) that is not perfectly spherical. The strongest signals come from compact heavy objects, including pulsars and black holes. Although invisible it is possible to 'see' these waves directly, and indirectly through their effects on objects that emit light. In my talk I will describe how this is done, and how this is used to understand the history of the Universe and the laws by which it operates.