Our understanding of the Universe is about to change…
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.
Two beams of subatomic particles called ‘hadrons’ – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.
There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions, but what’s for sure is that a brave new world of physics will emerge from the new accelerator, as knowledge in particle physics goes on to describe the workings of the Universe. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the higher energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm.
the more i read the more im starting to to love this machine, i wonder if i could have one built under my house, or more acurately under my whole town!!!
Facts and figures
The largest machine in the world…
The precise circumference of the LHC accelerator is 26 659 m, with a total of 9300 magnets inside. Not only is the LHC the world’s largest particle accelerator, just one-eighth of its cryogenic distribution system would qualify as the world’s largest fridge. All the magnets will be pre‑cooled to -193.2°C (80 K) using 10 080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen, before they are filled with nearly 60 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K).
The data recorded by each of the big experiments at the LHC will fill around 100 000 dual layer DVDs every year. To allow the thousands of scientists scattered around the globe to collaborate on the analysis over the next 15 years (the estimated lifetime of the LHC), tens of thousands of computers located around the world are being harnessed in a distributed computing network called the Grid.
The most powerful supercomputer system in the world…
To sample and record the results of up to 600 million proton collisions per second, physicists and engineers have built gargantuan devices that measure particles with micron precision. The LHC’s detectors have sophisticated electronic trigger systems that precisely measure the passage time of a particle to accuracies in the region of a few billionths of a second. The trigger system also registers the location of the particles to millionths of a metre. This incredibly quick and precise response is essential for ensuring that the particle recorded in successive layers of a detector is one and the same.
The biggest and most sophisticated detectors ever built…
The LHC is a machine of extreme hot and cold. When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space. By contrast, the ‘cryogenic distribution system’, which circulates superfluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – even colder than outer space!
The fastest racetrack on the planet…
At full power, trillions of protons will race around the LHC accelerator ring 11 245 times a second, travelling at 99.99% the speed of light. Two beams of protons will each travel at a maximum energy of 7 TeV (tera-electronvolt), corresponding to head-to-head collisions of 14 TeV. Altogether some 600 million collisions will take place every second.
The hottest spots in the galaxy, but even colder than outer space…
The LHC is a machine of extreme hot and cold. When two beams of protons collide, they will generate temperatures more than 100 000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun, concentrated within a minuscule space. By contrast, the ‘cryogenic distribution system’, which circulates superfluid helium around the accelerator ring, keeps the LHC at a super cool temperature of -271.3°C (1.9 K) – even colder than outer space!
The emptiest space in the Solar System…
To avoid colliding with gas molecules inside the accelerator, the beams of particles travel in an ultra-high vacuum – a cavity as empty as interplanetary space. The internal pressure of the LHC is 10-13 atm, ten times less than the pressure on the Moon!
well…thats just amazing and to think, all this for a mere 3 billion dollars!
heh heh heh…well i may laugh now but i would like to see anyone laugh in the face of a planet devouring black holeim not sure if i believe any of the doomsday predictions but as a really great guy named glen once said…
hmmm…..a very interesting machine indeed…if you do your homework on this machine youll realise that the doomsday scenarios are possible but not probable…this could lead to many breaktroughs in physics and among other things…possibly chemistry and rocket propultion, feul or other means of energy that may one day alow us to traverse the stars, help in reching and colonising mars or possibly even help in solving some of the universes greatest mysteries….and if im not mistaken, and i know its only a theory but ive read that it may even help towards studies into time travel and what not!
…anyway the sheer size of the thing is just amazing!
firstprimes blog 
This looks amazing and all, or dangerous, for that matter, but I’m disappointed that we (human beings) aren’t focused on more pressing matters than interplanetary or time travel. I know this will never happen, but wouldn’t it be great if all our efforts were diverted to feeding the hungry and building shelter for the homeless?
If third world countries are improved to first world conditions, wouldn’t they be able to help this research along even faster once they’re able? Take care of the loose ends before we jump to something that will give us (for the moment) useless information that will fill up terabytes upon terabytes of computers, when we even begin to decipher it, starving people in Africa will have died.
They want to see mother nature?
I think they are gonna meet God, and I am praying they don’t take the rest of us with them.
it’s called survival of the fittest.
this is much better spent money than feeding africans.
faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wou
“ehh” these are scientists not humanitarians debate about that else where!? Besides this an experiment to add more clarity of our vast universe .It’s absolutely fantastic, keep up the good work
i agree with the first person.
we should focus on making the world a better place and helping others that need to be helped instead of practically wasting billions of dollers on something that should be left alone. i am not bagging the people that are doing this but we should accept and appreciate what we have instead of putting the entire nation at risk!
i appreciate that we have this amazing gift of life and i defiantly dont want it to be taking away from me just because around 11 people decide they feel like it.
I cant wait fot this. Its amazing. I only heard it on the news yesterday. Really hope theres going to be a live recording of it happening. VERY Excited!
Its a bullshit, nothing gonna gain by a humanshit with Allah
I agree with the last comment, when it comes to helping the hungry they dont have any money, but when it comes to nonsense they have billions to spend on. What a World are we on?
I agree, but before we divert our energy to helping other countries, we should take care of the starvinb people where we live. What’s the point of all these breakthroughs if most of the people on the planet won’t be able to reap the benefits?
Go join one of those ass kissing politic groups that think the same way and wanna put 3rd world advancement 1st above everything else (even if it means stopping some great scientific projects)… Dont you think that what their doing here is great ? Who knows what they will find. It could even make a big step forward for the entire world, including those “oh so poor” people in 3rd world countries.
oh please, there will always be conflict and problems, we cannot feed every hungry person on earth, but since we have the educated scientists to research this extraordinary possibility…im gonna go ahead and say we continue studies.
this is sooooo cool! However, if the LHC wil go wrong, that can be that the whole Earth, or the Universe will be destroyed! I’m very afraid of this….
Wow, starving people in Africa? This is one of the most important experiment fixtures in particle physics in the past twenty years. I’m sure that doesn’t mean much to you based on your comment but don’t we just help all the people in Africa. I’m willing to bet that if you gave every dollar (or Euro or Swiss Franc) to Africa that was spent on this particle accelerator, there would still be just as many starving people in Africa because Africa is a haven for corruption. My heart goes out to people that suffer due to dictatorships and other militaristic governments but in all reality as long as people like you are willing to give all your money to them because of all the starving people, they are just going to continue to take that money and suckle on the prosperous ‘tit’ of the rest of the world. I personally would like to see the money go towards the particle accelerator so that in the future we can go back in time and get rid of all the dictators before they have a chance to starve their people and then Africa can have their own particle accelerator now.
fuck this gayy ass shit
On the other hand, nuclear particular reserach can provide answers to how to feed millions, how to treat/diagnose diseases and above all understand how we are all inherently made. This might sound like useless, but the advances in science is what benefits the ever growing billions of people around the globe. Even when we engage in these scientific pursuits, there are billions spent in war and other wasted efforts, around the world, which imho, should be diverted to peaceful and humanitarian services.
Ehh,
I must agree with you. this has huge pontential in the scientific realm, but we upper class humans seem to be focused on too distant of goals, when there are real world problems that could be solved with some elbow grease and a little of that money used on this project, or the attempts to land on mars. Ok, there is ice and water there. I dont want to be the first person to live on that ice box of a planet, so why dont we focus on making the planet we are currently living on liveable for all of its inhabitants.
I hope you starve to death.
in response the ”ehh” your right we could spend the money to feed the hungry
But have you ever thought that the reason why people are hungry is because humans are over-populating earth. We no longer have predators and that is why people are going hungry we have change the balance of nature and guess what nature is doing back. Creating diseases like Aids and cancer which directly attack our over-growth by reducing our life span and attacking our reproduction system. So no I dont have the a problem with this being built as it is part of our human concious evolution. Think more survival of the fittest. If we truly made the effort to feed everyone in earth and no one went hungry the earth eventually would not be able to sustain food for everyone. We humans already reproduce like a plague, can you imagine if everyone was happy and fed. In a couple of years we would all starve. as we would comsume all of earth’s resources at a even faster pace we already are.
I know is sad to see people dying of starvation. But reality is that thats just the way things balance each other. Think more of the big picture.
well hmmmm, a heated discussion over politics and morals, equality and rights. all this over my little blog, well. anyway, all this talk about wasting bilions, havent governments already donated billions and saw little improvement, think about what the first collision experiments got us, xray machines! if we got anything to equal that it would be worth the billions and more! this is a time of science and innovation and its built now so theres no use bitchin about it! we might aswell use it now that we got it cos unless the poor, starvin folk in africa have and use for a 17 mile long supercollider it aint gonna turn into a big heapin pile of food and fix one of the worlds biggest problems in the blink of an eye! so stop complaining whats done is done and there aint no goin back. so just accept that africa can get all the moneuy in the world but to fix such a broken nation will take time, and alot of it!
I can give alot of better ways to spend money instead of spending it on this bunch of bull shit. Ya’ll Athiest MoFo’s need to start making cures for cancer and medical illnesses instead of this shit…ya’ll wanna learn how the universe was made…pick up a book called the “Holy Bible”. QUIT TRYIN TO PLAY GOD!!!!!
i hope it blows up in ya’lls face…sucks ya’ll in and ya’ll can make this shit for another “world”
Do ya’ll sit around and jerk-off to this? I bet ya’ll fondled ya’lls selves watching “Back to the Future”…
ehh, i take it from your post that you are a hunmanitarian who lives in africa and donates all your time and money to helping the poor for whom you care so much, and for that we all thank you.
If you are not however, maybe you should stop being such a hypocrite. what’s the difference between you being paid for your job and these scientists being paid to do theirs? the answer is simple. their job will make a difference to the world. think about it
Finally a way to completely burn a hole through the centre of our planet!!! And we thought global warming wasn’t fast enough aye??? Oh well, when it all goes wrong, then they’ll say ooopppsss!!!
I agree with Manny 100%.
I could not have said it better myself.
malcolm
September 10, 2008 at 7:12 am
it’s called survival of the fittest.
this is much better spent money than feeding africans.
MALCOLM is a Stupid useless being to leave this comment on here…yes i am an African and in college now and i have over half a million dollars in my account and this stupid useless goat thinks everyone in Africa is hungry huh ..you stupid foolish bastard from a retarded mother with no brains…You are the product from your dads mistake for not putting on a condom before having sex with your mother…Get A LIFE!!!
feeding the hungry and pulling the lagging countries up with us is not gonna help..they would probably turn on us in the long run and come back to bite us in the ass. I mean honestly they probably have a grudge on us for something that if given opportunity for they would get revenge..and this science matter can open so many new doors why would we stop because of a few conspiracy theorists are afraid the worlds gonna end..and if it does we’ll go out like we came in..with a big bang
shum nice
Maybe I was a little too optimistic about true human nature. Let me make it clear that I’m saying that the money spent on this over 20 years could have been used to better all of humanity’s conditions. I realize that many 1rst world countries have given massive amounts of aid to less-than-well-off countries, and that the leadership in these countries is commonly corrupted, but couldn’t the money be used to fix that too? If you think these people will come back to bite us in the end, the aid could be distributed in such a way that was not related to the US government.
As for the people who advocate the LHC for the advancement of human evolution, I understand your argument. But I feel that if we bettered world conditions as the human race first, then built the LHC maybe.. 20 years later on the timeline, wouldn’t someone in the year 3000 look back on our era and generation with reverence and respect, for the good that we at least tried to do?
What kind of person are you if you say “survival of the fittest”? Do you have no moral fiber? If we’re so evolved that we can build things like the LHC, we’re obviously not animals driven by instinct. You’re contradicting yourself.
I don’t believe the world is technically overpopulated, but I believe that it has not been populated in the best way possible.
I hope Shizuka was joking, because he really did come across as a stupid redneck who believes in fictional characters.
The Holy Bible? I stopped reading kids’ books when I was 8, LOL!
The sheer size of this thing is truly amazing. Does anyone else see the erie similarities between man kind’s crowning achievement here, this buried huge subterranean industrial and scientific complex compared to the Krell machine buried on Altair IV in the Sci Fi movie Forbidden Planet? The Krell were taken out by their monsters from the ID. The earth may be taken out by mini monster black holes created by the Hadron collider..