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 10th September 2008, and on the 30th
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:
-
-- 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?
