What Does the Large Hadron Collider Actually Do?

What Does The Large Hadron Collider Actually Do?

      Over the last year or so you’ve probably heard of the large hadron collider at some point, whether it’s because you have a particular interest in particle physics or even just if you just watch the news; but what actually is it, and what does it actually do…?

‘The Large Hadron Collider’ - bit of a strange name, what does it really mean? Well, a hadron is a composite particle made of quarks (extremely small sub-atomic matter) that are all held together by something called the strong force which is just one of the 4 fundamental interactions between matter. The best known types of hadrons are protons and neutrons. A collider is simply a piece of equipment that is used to accelerate elementary particles at each other.  

                 You may have some basic knowledge of what this Large Hadron Collider achieves such as “it fires small things at other small things to see what happens” and in its very basic form – Yes, you’re correct. But you may be lost in the details of what it is trying to achieve, and with the whole construction costing well over £4bn, you would expect it to be doing something useful, right?

      Short History:

            So, the Large Hadron Collider is situated in the town of Geneva, Switzerland and it is the most powerful particle accelerator ever to be made. The LHC was built by an organisation named CERN and this whole process of construction took around 10 years – with the grand opening being in 2008. The LHC lies in a tunnel which is 27km long, and as deep as 175 metres in most parts. The first successful attempt to fire beams of particles was completed on the 10^th September 2008, and on the 30^th March 2010, the team at CERN broke the world record for the ‘highest energy man-made particle collision ever’.

      What happens in the Large Hadron Collider:

      So, let’s work on our basic understanding from before: “It fires small things at other small things to see what happens”. In this basic understanding, the ‘small thing’ is something called a particle – a particle is simply a sub atomic mass which is one of the building blocks of everything around us.  These particles can take a few different forms such as an electrons, neutrinos and photons just to name a few.

The process of firing these particles together is the job of the team at CERN and it is what they have they been doing since its opening in 2008. They use something called a synchrotron (a fancy word for the equipment used to accelerate the particles) to collide opposing particle beams, this was built by a team of 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries around the world.

So once the beams have been fired, they travel around the course of the LHC and are constantly accelerating towards until they reach the speed of light – a universal speed limit for any object at 300,000,000 metres per second. If your thinking, ‘Why the value of 300,000,000’ then that’s a whole different topic (‘general relativity’ to be precise) and you don’t need to worry about to understand this at the moment.

                 There are 4 main, multi-purpose particle detectors at the LHC, these are called; ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LCHb. You may be thinking; ‘What is the purpose of these particle detectors?’ Well… When the particles hit each other, their energy is converted into many different particles, and these particle detectors keep track of the pieces that are created. By looking carefully at the data from these detectors, scientists can study what certain particles are made of and how the particles interact with each other.

     Purpose of the Large Hadron Collider:

     The main aim for the team at CERN who came up with the idea and built the Large Hadron Collider is to answer some of the fundamental questions that scientists have about the basic laws of the universe.

In a world where we are immersed in technological innovation and where scientists have the answer for so many problems, it may seem strange that they are still trying to understand basic laws – but, while the advancements in gadgets such as phones, computers and televisions seems almost unstoppable, the basic laws of physics are part of a much wider picture, and one that unifies everything around us – from the particles being fired at CERN, to the smartphone in your pocket.  

The accelerator’s experiments are designed to collide the particle beams together to try and recreate the conditions of the early universe, just after the ‘Big Bang’ – which is the fundamental event responsible for the creation of our whole universe. Where the LHC becomes incredibly useful is in answering these basic laws of physics , scientist want to learn more about particular topics that will have the greatest impact on our understanding of the universe, a few of these include:

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      -- The forces among particles

-       -- The structure of space and time

-       -- Where, and if the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics overlap – as there is very little understanding of this so far.

-       -- Physicists also want to find out more about the famous ‘God Particle’ or better known as the Higgs Boson Particle – the piece of matter which is responsible for all giving objects mass.

So, while it may be easy for sceptics to be negative about the Large Hadron Collider from both a price and purpose stance, the work that it conducts cannot not be denied to be any less than remarkable; not only because it applies to and affects every aspect of our life and the universe we live in, but because without it – how can we expect to explore and endeavour into the vast universe that surrounds us? Without the knowledge that the LHC provides, we would be restricted simply to planet Earth in our scientific evolutions, and with such a vast universe surrounding us… where’s the fun in that?