WHat does a Large Hardon Collider do?
sorry it's late. THey are just asking for typos in their documents aren't they.
LHC RAP said:Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…
LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.
We see asteroids and planets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that matter cannot explain
What holds all these stars together – something else remains
This dark matter interacts only through mavity
And how do you catch a particle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the conservation of energy
And the particles appear, clear as can be
You see particles flying, in jets they spray
But you notice there ain’t nothin’, goin’ the other way
You say, “My law has just been violated – it don’t make sense!
There’s gotta be another particle to make this balance.”
And it might be dark matter, and for first
Time we catch a glimpse of what must fill most of the known ‘Verse.
Because…
LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
Antimatter is sort of like matter’s evil twin
Because except for charge and handedness of spin
They’re the same for a particle and its anti-self
But you can’t store an antiparticle on any shelf
Cuz when it meets its normal twin, they both annihilate
Matter turns to energy and then it dissipates
When matter is created from energy
Which is exactly what they’ll do in the LHC
You get matter and antimatter in equal parts
And they try to take that back to when the universe starts
The Big Bang – back when the matter all exploded
But the amount of antimatter was somehow eroded
Because when we look around we see that matter abounds
But antimatter’s nowhere to be found.
That’s why…
LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.
The Higgs Boson – that’s the one that everybody talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the scientists will finally say
“There is no Higgs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our Standard Model went awry.”
But the Higgs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They suppose that particles have mass because
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ***
And the Higgs is a boson that carries a force
And makes particles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it….
LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
Now some of you may think that mavity is strong
Cuz when you fall off your bicycle it don’t take long
Until you hit the earth, and you say, “Dang, that hurt!”
But if you think that force is powerful, you’re wrong.
You see, mavity – it’s weaker than Weak
And the reason why is something many scientists seek
They think about dimensions – we just live in three
But maybe there are some others that are too small to see
It’s into these dimensions that mavity extends
Which makes it seem weaker, here on our end.
And these dimensions are “rolled up” – curled so tight
That they don’t affect you in your day to day life
But if you were as tiny as a graviton
You could enter these dimensions and go wandering on
And they'd find you...
When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head!
December 21st, 2012 it will get goingNot that the BBC is a reputable source of information, but I hope this is true and that this thing is going to finally get started soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8364964.stm

December 21st, 2012 it will get going![]()

Not that the BBC is a reputable source of information, but I hope this is true and that this thing is going to finally get started soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8364964.stm
And what is a Reputable source of information according to you?
Not that the BBC is a reputable source of information, but I hope this is true and that this thing is going to finally get started soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8364964.stm
At allotted points around the tunnel, the proton beams will cross[..]
Considering that Dara Ó Briain holds a degree in Theoretical Physics ...
Every time I read Proton Beams I imagine Protein Beans![]()

Geneva, 20 November 2009. Particle beams are once again circulating in the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, CERN1’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This news comes after the machine was handed over for operation on Wednesday morning. A clockwise circulating beam was established at ten o'clock this evening. This is an important milestone on the road towards first physics at the LHC, expected in 2010.
“It’s great to see beam circulating in the LHC again,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “We’ve still got some way to go before physics can begin, but with this milestone we’re well on the way.”
The LHC circulated its first beams on 10 September 2008, but suffered a serious malfunction nine days later. A failure in an electrical connection led to serious damage, and CERN has spent over a year repairing and consolidating the machine to ensure that such an incident cannot happen again.
“The LHC is a far better understood machine than it was a year ago,” said CERN’s Director for Accelerators, Steve Myers. “We’ve learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That’s how progress is made.”
Recommissioning the LHC began in the summer, and successive milestones have regularly been passed since then. The LHC reached its operating temperature of 1.9 Kelvin, or about -271 Celsius, on 8 October. Particles were injected on 23 October, but not circulated. A beam was steered through three octants of the machine on 7 November, and circulating beams have now been re-established. The next important milestone will be low-energy collisions, expected in about a week from now. These will give the experimental collaborations their first collision data, enabling important calibration work to be carried out. This is significant, since up to now, all the data they have recorded comes from cosmic rays. Ramping the beams to high energy will follow in preparation for collisions at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) next year.
Particle physics is a global endeavour, and CERN has received support from around the world in getting the LHC up and running again.
“It’s been a herculean effort to get to where we are today,” said Myers. “I’d like to thank all those who have taken part, from CERN and from our partner institutions around the world.”
A press conference will be held at CERN, at the Globe of Science and Innovation, at 2pm on Monday 23 November, and webcast at: http://webcast.cern.ch/. Submit your questions to @CERN via Twitter. We cannot guarantee that all questions will be answered.
Follow LHC progress on twitter at www.twitter.com/cern
For photos, video and latest information see: http://press.web.cern.ch/press/lhc-first-physics/
Contact : http://press.web.cern.ch/press/ContactUs.html

Seems like they didn't want to wait until December and risk it failing under the media spotlight again.
The risky part has just been tested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8375486.stm