large hadron collider? it s the world s most powerful particle accelerator and its discoveries of the higgs boson and dozens of other subatomic particles have changed our understanding of physics. but for the last three years, it s not been operating. the shutdown was planned to undertake vital repairs and upgrade work, but the pandemic meant it s taken longer than expected. soon, the collider will be switched on again to start the next phase of experiments. and the uk s new polar research ship has arrived in antarctica, and soon it will be undergoing trials to see how it copes with the thick ice there. the vessel, which was almost called boaty mcboatface after a public vote, is now named after the british naturalist sir david attenborough. it s the most advanced polar vessel ever to set sail, and scientists will use it to study every aspect of this remote and rapidly changing ecosystem.
one of the biggest steps forward for a generation. scientists believe that there are four fundamental forces of nature. one for gravity, another for electricity, and two nuclear forces which control the behaviour of atoms. together, they explain the way the world works, but in recent years, astronomers began noticing things in space that cannot be explained by the four forces, such as galaxies spinning faster than they should and they can t explain why the stars and planets and everything on them, including ours, exist at all. the new results suggest there might be a fifth force which could explain some of these mysteries. the result was from thermilab, a particle accelerator from just outside chicago. scientists accelerated particles inside this giant ring close to the speed of light. and they found something that cannot be explained by the current theory of physics at the subatomic level.