On Wednesday this week Year 12 students attended a Particle Physics Masterclass at the University of Liverpool.

Students attended several lectures on different types of fundamental particles and learnt about the current research into understanding dark matter (which makes up 95% of the universe!), the interactions of particles with gravity and the irregular abundance of antimatter.

The lecturers discussed how current research is focused on developing instruments to give particles enough energy to simulate their properties around the time of the Big Bang.

The afternoon involved analysing real data from the Large Hadron Collider (black-hole machine) in Switzerland, lab tours and a video call with staff currently working at the actual Large Hadron collider.