Large Hadron Collider

Lysander · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:52

It's large. And apparently it collides hadrons.

Can someone explain - in layman's terms - what this actually means?

Cupra · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:54

you lost me i thought it was summot to do with hardons

G|mp · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:55

Its a big ring that's under the ground that stretches for miles and miles

They accelerate particles that smash into each other using magnetic forces i think

Van Hellseek · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:56

Wasn't it supposed to have killed us all by now?

paradigm · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:56

There are many MANY sites out there on the internet, try googling a few.

Wiki has a good article on it.

yak.h'cir · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:56

It uses magnetic fields to accelerate particles to extremely high speeds around a giant circular track, they are then collided into each other which cause them to break apart and do other funky stuff due to the extremely high amount of energy being focused into such a small space. The results of these collisions are extremely carefully measured.

Hadron is just a name for a type of subatomic particle (protons and neutrons are hadrons).

Dandle · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:56

I think it fires electrons at each other at massive speeds and this recreates the big bang from where they think the universe started. Something along those lines anyway.

G|mp · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:56

http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/LHC/LHC-en.html

"andy" · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:57

its not been turned on yet has it ?

Van Hellseek · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:57

"andy" said:
its not been turned on yet has it ?

Thought it was scheduled for may/june this year.

meghatronic · 6 Jul 2008 at 11:57

There's something in FHM about it this month

brocksta · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:00

They basically make a big tube underground - which passes through both france and switzerland and use electromagnets the size of cars to force particles around the tube in either direction.

Piccy from when i was there:

The magnets force the particles around the tube at close to the speed of light before they are sent into each other.

When they collide they break into loads and loads of pieces. The scientists are recording what pieces - essentially new particles that are created to find new particles - one being gravitons which they believe are the cause of mavity.

That is my understanding however i was there to see their computer infrastructure so im not up on particle physics

Ben M · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:02

Dandle said:
I think it fires electrons at each other at massive speeds and this recreates the big bang from where they think the universe started. Something along those lines anyway.

Err no.

Electrons aren't hadrons.

The large hadron accelerates particles (hadrons) to speeds which are significant compared to the speed of light, and then collides them. As said, they use magnets to acelerate the particles. The magnets themselves are very cold, they're actually one fo the coldest places int he universe (the coldest I think was also man made, when looking to observe a quantum phenomenon whose name escapes me).

What they're looking for is the Higg's boson, which was predicted to exist by the standard model of particle physics, but has not yet been observed. If they don't find it, there will be a lot of head scratching done by boffins, and probably another collider

Amleto · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:02

Dandle said:
I think it fires electrons at each other at massive speeds and this recreates the big bang from where they think the universe started. Something along those lines anyway.

steady on there, old chap!

It just smashes a couple of atoms together and looks at what happens to the 'pieces' that fly off. Nothing to do with singularities.

Gilly · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:03

"andy" said:
its not been turned on yet has it ?

At its 147th meeting in Geneva today, the CERN1 Council heard news on progress towards start-up of the laboratory’s flagship research facility, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Commissioning of the 27-kilometre LHC began in January 2007 when the first cool down of one of the machine’s eight sectors began. Today, five sectors are at or close to their operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero and the remaining three are approaching that temperature. Once all sectors are cold, electrical testing will be concluded in readiness for first beams, currently scheduled for August.

Not quite ready yet.

VaderDSL · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:06

Didn't one of the supercooled magnets explode durig a power up test?

Edit - Not quite http://user.web.cern.ch/user/quicklinks/announcements/2007/LHCInnerTriplet_2.html

Edit 2 - That was a looooong time ago sorry

brocksta · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:07

Dandle said:
I think it fires electrons at each other at massive speeds and this recreates the big bang from where they think the universe started. Something along those lines anyway.

I think they believe that when the particles collide it will create a huge amount of energy similar to that of the big bang.

I think they would cause some problems if they re-created a universe

craaaaaig · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:12

So what does it actually do? Sounds very expensive just for some poxy experiment on particles.. in what way will it benefit us?

Lysander · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:17

invoke said:
So what does it actually do? Sounds very expensive just for some poxy experiment on particles.. in what way will it benefit us?

OK, so far I've learned:

a] It collides hadrons

b] because they're looking for pig's bosun. But they don't know whether it will actually work.

I'm not getting very far with this.

Ben M · 6 Jul 2008 at 12:18

Lysander said:
b] because they're looking for pig's bosun. But they don't know whether it actually exists or not.

I'm not getting very far with this.

The standard model of particle physics predicts the existence of this particle. If it doesn't exist then the model is wrong, or at least needs a serious re-think.

Large Hadron Collider

Capodecina

Capodecina