THiNKiNG STRONG - CP3-Origins

Mankind’s greatest achievements have come from the inner
curiosity to know how the world works. Everything we see
and even things we do not see are combinations of a handful
of elementary particles. We live in a particle universe.
Explorations of the innermost structure of nature is leading to
unprecedented heights in scientific discovery, invention and
technological advancement. The Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) at CERN is the most ambitious scientific experiment in
the world and is setting the agenda for particle physics for, at
least, the next decade. It is accelerating two beams of protons
in opposite directions around a 27km underground tunnel,
until they reach almost the speed of light. The particles are
then collided creating energies higher than ever before. The
primary goal of the LHC is to nail the mechanism responsible
for giving all the known elementary particles, such as the
electron, mass. This is the Higgs mechanism and the known
elementary particles belong to the universe's bright side. The
bright side amounts to, at most, a few percent of the universe,
the remaining 96% is made of unknown forms of matter and
energy. These are known as dark matter and dark energy
since they are invisible to us. LHC and several other earth
and space experiments are simultaneously trying to shed
light on the dark side.
We aim to exploit the synergy between experimental results
and our theoretical and phenomenological expertise, as well
as supercomputers to help making a quantitative impact on
the next big leap in particle physics and cosmology:
Uncovering the origins of the bright and dark side of the universe.
These are considered among the most important problems in
physics and the project is acutely primed to raise Danish
research to the very top
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