Hell Yeah, We Might Get a Biblical Addition to the Large Hadron Collider

The world’s largest particle collider is set to get a brand new toy, named for the oldest guy in the Bible.

The toy–a detector, actually—is called MATHUSLA. Researchers submitted a conceptual design report for the detector’s design to the preprint server arXiv on March 26, where it’s now hosted.

“MATHUSLA” is a merciful and incredibly forced acronym for the MAssive Timing Hodoscope for Ultra-Stable neutraL pArticles. The acronym is a reference to Methuselah, a biblical figure who lived nearly 1,000 years. Why the name? Because the hodoscope would seek out especially long-lived particles in the Large Hadron Collider, which have so far escaped detection amid the collider’s subatomic fireworks show.

The LHC achieved one of its main goals over a decade ago, with the observation of a Higgs boson in 2012. Since then, particle physicists have been pondering how the gigantic, costly collider can yield further insights into the fundamental building blocks and interactions of classical physics.

The LHC is set to be upgraded into the High-Luminosity LHC, which will increase the facility’s luminosity by a factor of ten and increase the number of Higgs bosons CERN physicists will be able to study. That upgrade is expected to be completed by 2029, and MATHUSLA is proposed to work alongside the improved version of the world-famous collider.

The fundamental design of the detector is thus: a massive box, 131 feet (40 meters) on each side and 36 feet (11 m) tall. The box would be filled with detectors that would sniff out long-lived particles that elude the LHC’s main detectors.

The new detector’s approximate cost, according to the report, is $44.5 million (€40 million). Is it cheap? Nope. Yet it’s designed to be cost-effective: smaller than earlier proposals, but still big enough to be game-changing.

Late last month, CERN outlined a feasibility study for the Future Circular Collider (FCC), the could-be successor to the LHC. The $17 billion FCC would be three times the size of the LHC, buried twice as deep underground, and would begin operations before 2050—though it wouldn’t be completed before the end of the century.

MATHUSLA would offer results sooner. Physicists’ hope is to have MATHUSLA ready to ride alongside the HL-LHC, which is slated to begin full-throttle operations in the 2030s.

As long as the detector’s name doesn’t become a punchline for the time it takes for it to become a reality, there’s a new opportunity for physicists to find physics at the brink of our current understanding.