What could the LHC teach us on the structure of space-time?

• Main Author: Triantaphyllou George
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: EDP Sciences 2016-01-01
• Series: EPJ Web of Conferences
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201612604048

Collision energies of proton beams now available at the LHC increase the probability of discovering the inner works of the Brout-Englert-Higgs (BEH) mechanism within the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, they are still several orders of magnitude below the scale where a possible non-trivial structure of space-time would be detectable. Apart from remaining completely silent on the issue of the fundamental nature of elementary particles and the space in which they propagate, one may try to speculate on this matter by carefully extrapolating existing scientific methods and knowledge to Planck energies. In this talk, an effort is made to logically link some potential discoveries at the LHC with specific space-time structures. Since such links are inevitably weak due to the huge energy hierarchy between the electro-weak and the Planck scales, our goal does not exceed a mere presentation of naturalness and self-consistency arguments in favor of some of the possible outcomes, placing particular emphasis on the scenario of the mirror world.