With
the three-day weekend coming up, one potential option of travel has been
Italy’s northern neighbor, Switzerland. While Switzerland is not the most prime
travel spot in Europe, there are many aspects that have attracted us to this
wealthy country. As tourists, the Swiss Alps and the beautiful sight-seeing
pulls us in, but as scientists, one of the world’s largest and most remarkable research
instruments simply mesmerizes us. It’s not a several million dollar telescope
or a NMR spectroscopy machine, but it’s actually the Large Hadron Collider
(LHC). As a project built and internationally sponsored by the European
Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the LHC has been a grandeur and significant
tool in the scientific community, currently hosting several modernly advanced
experiments that would otherwise be impossible.
As
mostly chemists and biologists, the LHC does not really seem to have any immense
significance or prominence to us, but the pivotal results of the physics
experiments performed on the machine has the potential to change the world
around us, either confirming or invalidating all our knowledge, including that
of chemistry and biology. This “make-or-break” instrument called the Large
Hadron Collider is currently the world’s largest particle accelerator and is
very likely the most important and renowned piece of equipment in modern
physics; engineers and physicists admire and venerate the LHC as a scientific
masterpiece of great potent. You may be wondering why a mere particle
accelerator is such a big deal, considering the name implies that it just
tosses two things together. Partially correct, but let’s start with a few
jaw-dropping statistics. Resting (well, that’s ironic, considering the immense
amounts of energy being used by the machine) a hundred meters underground, the
LHC is basically a circular “race-track” with a circumference of 27 kilometers (for
the United States, 17 miles) and massively spans across two countries, Switzerland
and France. Mainly located right outside Geneva, the colossal instrument can be
considered an essential “race-track” in respect to its function and purpose in
the field of physics as a particle accelerator.
A particle accelerator basically
speeds up subatomic particles, such as protons, electrons, leptons and others,
for different various purposes, usually for a high-speed collision which can be
studied via a sensitive detector. In these instruments, the charged subatomic
particles are generally accelerated by electromagnetic fields while being held
in consistent, sharp beams. Normally, particle accelerators can have different
shaped tracks, including simple linear paths and complex cyclones, each having
advantages and disadvantages. In the case of the LHC, the track is circular in
shape due to its necessity for high-energy collisions at extreme speeds. The
circular track serves as the ideal shape for a high-energy collision as the
particles can repeatedly cycle the track until a desired speed is reach. The hadrons,
which are either protons or lead ions, in the LHC are continually accelerated
by thousands of electromagnets strategically placed along the perimeter of the
circular, tubular track. Furthermore, the single track facilitates hadrons
traveling in opposite directions essentially around the same path, except
slightly displaced from each other to avoid premature collision. Therefore, in
addition to propelling the hadrons, the electromagnets must also control the
particles by keeping them on the same separate paths and maintaining their
formation as distinct beams. This seemingly easy task becomes increasingly
difficult as the energy and speed of the particles rise towards their target
state. On top of that, the paths forced on and traveled by the particles must
be incredibly accurate during the entire time of acceleration, which can be up
to several hours, depending on the required conditions; otherwise, one little
mistake can cause the loss of all the work and energy put into the trial. To
emphasize the accuracy, even the tides of the Moon must be taken into
consideration for the path traveled by the hadrons. In the case of a full or
new moon, the gravitational pull from the moon and the shift of the Earth’s
crust alters the beam of hadrons in the LHC to be slightly off-course from the
curvature of the circular path, so the operators must adjust and correct for
this misalignment. The accuracy of the hadrons’ path is excruciatingly important
considering the build-up for a several trillion electron volt collision at
speeds bordering the speed of light.
As of
today, several milestones have been achieved as researchers progressively move
towards the LHC’s ultimate goal. Currently, there are six different “experiments”
being run at the LHC: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb, TOTEM, and LHCf. However, these
are not really experiments in the sense that we would think of them as, but
instead they are the various types of detectors used to study the particles and
the conditions of their collision. Each of these particle detectors serves a
different purpose and study unique things. The two major detectors, ATLAS and
CMS, study the main aspects of the LHC, analyzing the various particles formed
from the hadron collisions in the accelerator. Similarly, except designed to be
more specific, the next two experiments, ALICE and LHCb, are intended to detect
and examine the collisions for certain phenomena and particular questions, not
particles in general. Moreover, almost as supplementary experiments, TOTEM and
LHCf are the smallest detectors of the three and simply concentrate on the
hadrons that do not end up colliding, also called “forward particles;” these
particles are the few rare ones that do not directly collide at full energy,
instead they miss completely or skim past each other. All together, these six
experiments are used to study the conditions of the high-energy collisions
produced in the LHC, moving the scientists closer to achieving their hopeful
end goal: finding the “God Particle.” Physicists believe that using the LHC to recreate
conditions similar to that of the Big Bang (which conspiracy theorists believe
will end the world) by high-energy collisions will allow them to find and study
a particle known as Higgs Boson, or more commonly known as the “God Particle.” Higgs
Boson is basically the epitome of and key to all physics (and pretty much every
other field of science)! By confirming and studying the existence of Higgs Boson,
some of the things that can be resolved and founded include the origin and
explanation of mass, information on the mysterious dark matter, and possibly
uncovering another dimension of space. More specifically, Higgs Boson is a
hypothetical elementary particle at the core of modern and particle physics. The
daunting task of recreating the Big Bang and finding Higgs Boson is not as easy
as it sounds; the difficulty comes in at the high-energy collision. Up to
current day, the LHC has been reportedly able to successfully operate at 4 TeV
(teraelectronvolts) per beam for a total collision energy of a whopping 8 TeV.
Theoretically by calculations, in order to achieve Big Bang conditions and the
finding of Higgs Boson, the LHC has to smash protons together at 7 TeV per beam
for an insane collision of 14 TeV, which the Large Hadron Collider was actually
designed for. In the coming months, the LHC is expected close for upgrades that
will allow the 14 TeV collision and the director of CERN responsible for the
LHC, Rolf-Dieter Heuer, predicts that the conclusion to Higgs Boson will be determined
by the end of the year.
Unfortunately,
as much as we would like to, due to time-constraints, we will not be able to visit
Geneva, Switzerland and marvel at the wondrous Large Hadron Collider (instead
we will be visiting the never-ending canals of Venice). Even if we were able to
go to Geneva, I would think the closest we could ever get to the LHC would be
the gate around the facility. I would imagine the security would be tight and
strict at such an expensive and important machine, especially after a man claiming
to be from the future world of a “communist chocolate hellhole” tried to
sabotage the LHC’s operation by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the
facility’s vending machines. Most ironic part was that he disappeared after being
put into a mental health facility. O_O (True story from a fairly reliable
source, quite a funny read as well. Check it out: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/man-arrested-at-large-hadron-collider-claims-hes-from-the-future-49305387/)
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