Two of the general purpose detectors at the LHC, ATLAS and CMS, tend to keep a high profile, as they're designed to be able to spot anything that comes out of the collisions—the Higgs, dark matter, or something even more exotic. LHCb is quite a bit more specialized, as it is designed specifically to track those collisions that include a particle that contains a bottom quark (generically, these particles are called
B mesons). In doing so, it's meant to provide the most precise test of a number of predictions made by the Standard Model; should the test show it fails, they could provide indications of
supersymmetry or a mechanism that explains why our Universe is filled with matter and not antimatter.
As with the other two detectors, the people behind LHCb have put together their preliminary data for the summer physics meetings, and so far, it all looks very good; the detector has already provided the most precise test of some features of the Standard Model. And, so far, it has emerged unscathed, which may mean bad things for supersymmetry and send theoreticians back to the drawing board on our matter/antimatter asymmetry.
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/201 ... Content%29