It is one of the biggest and most controversial experiments to be carried out in recent times. On September 10, a machine costing a staggering $7.75 billion (Rs 31,000 crore) will be fired up to recapture conditions not seen since the birth of the universe almost 14 billion years ago. The machine, located at CERN, a Geneva-based nuclear research lab, will carry on the experiment inside a 27-km tunnel deep beneath the French-Swiss border.The news of the experiment has evoked resentment from some experts, who feel that such an experiment could cause the end of the universe. In fact, scientists working on to recreate forces that occurred immediately after the Big Bang have received death threats. The main thing is India’s contribution in search of the universe’s missing matter by smashing particles like during the Big Bang is equally impressive. Around 200 of the 2,000 scientists doing the experiment are from India.
What is LHC: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest and most complex machine ever made and the platform for what experts say is the largest scientific experiment in human history about 10,000 people working in 500 universities in 80 countries. the LHC is nothing like as simple as flipping a switch. A chain of smaller accelerators, built for earlier projects, are first used to speed up the proton beams to the point where they can be injected into the machine. The start of the process is a bottle of hydrogen gas no bigger than a fire extinguisher.Hydrogen atoms are stripped of their electrons to produce streams of protons that are fed into accelerators of increasing size.The last link in the chain before the LHC, the Super Proton Synchrotron, is itself buried underground and stretches for more than four miles. Timing between the Synchrotron and the LHC has to be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond. The £5billion collider is designed to smash sub-atomic protons into each other at energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before. At different points around the tunnel, the beams will be guided to cross paths, near four massive ‘detectors’ that monitor the collisions for interesting events. The LHC could help scientists explain mass, gravity, and the mysterious ‘dark matter’ that fills much of the universe.
What exactly the experiment is: The LHC is buried under 300ft of rock and straddles the borders of Switzerland and France between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.The beams of protons will be accelerated in opposite directions through the ring-shaped tunnel, which is supercooled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (minus 271C), the lowest temperature allowed by nature.Reaching velocities of 99.99 per cent of the speed of light, each beam will pack as much energy as a Eurostar train travelling at 93mph.The particles will be brought together in four huge ‘detectors’ placed along the ring. Each detector is like a giant microscope, designed to probe deeper into the heart of matter than has ever been possible before.
Why we need this experiment:
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It could give the first evidence of extra spatial dimensions that have been hypothesised by physicists such as Stephen Hawking.
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The particle collider could provide proof of Stephen Hawking’s theory that black holes emit radiation.
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It could also give- Without the Higgs particle (Named after physicist Peter Higgs), electrons would have no mass and atoms wouldn’t stick together. We would fall apart into piles of atomic nuclei.
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Most scientists believe is the only explanation of an expanding universe, should show how stars and planets came together.
Protons have made their first complete lap of the world’s most powerful accelerator to cheers and high fives from assembled physicists.At 1025 (local time) scientists sent a single beam of protons in a clockwise direction around the full 27 kilometers of the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.The journey began at 09:30 when LHC project leader Lyn Evans and his team launched protons into the ring. Progress was made in short steps of a few kilometers, so that physicists could learn how to steer the beam, which is travelling at 99.9998% the speed of light.”We’ve got a beam on the LHC,” project leader Lyn Evans told his colleagues, who burst into applause at the news.The several hundred physicists and technicians huddled in the control room later celebrated loudly again when a particle beam completed a trajectory of the accelerator in one direction, a key step a CERN spokeswoman described as “fantastic.”
Particle physicist Dr James Gillies, a spokesman for the LHC, said:
“We have received a lot of worried calls from people about it.”There’s nothing to worry about, the LHC is absolutely safe because we have observed nature doing the same things the LHC has done. “Protons regularly collide in the earth’s upper atmosphere without creating black holes.”
