One of the technological marvels of modern history is the Large Hadron Collider. It is one of the biggest international scientific projects ever undertaken. The structure is located over 170 metres beneath the French/Swiss border. Scientists from all over the world are working together to unravel the secrets of nature, and especially the processes and interactions related to particle mass. By smashing protons together at high energies scientists will attempt to recreate similar conditions to what most likely occurred shortly after the Big Bang. Colliding particles at such high energies will cause annihilation of those particles, and results in the creation of other particles (since the energy has to go somewhere, it does not disappear – check the Law of Conservation of Energy).
After some setbacks, the LHC has now broken several records related to high-energy particle acceleration. The accelerator is capable of colliding protons at 7 TeV (teraelectronvolts) per particle. If all goes well the LHC will be running at full capacity after a planned shutdown in 2012.
Sites related to the Large Hadron Collider:
One of my favourite LHC sites is Colliding Particles. It’s a series of videos following researchers at CERN.
A good explanation of the various experiments and detectors can be found at the CERN LHC public outreach site.
You can always count on the BBC to provide a nicely written guide, click here to go to BBC’s site which contains plenty of interesting facts and media.
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