Large Hadron Collider

Big Science for the 21st CenturyDavid Lantz

Basics

Circular tunnel with 27km circumference buried 50-175 m underground

Outside Geneva on the Swiss-French border Operated by European Organization for Nuclear

Research (CERN) World's largest particle accelerator

Purpose

Answer fundamental questions of physics Look into the moments after Big Bang Dark Matter Higgs Boson Supersymmetry

Showcase international scientific cooperation

What does it really do? The ring is actually two

tracks which intersect

Scientists fire protons down each track, making them slam into each other at extremely high speeds

Acquire data from collisions, which produce high energy similar to after Big Bang

Why is it worth it?

Physicists have hit the wall

LHC has the potential to further our understanding of the universe in unprecedented ways

Not practical application of science, but practical applications of technologies used

Concerns

$9 billion project without practical application of findings

Doomsday prophecies

Triumphs Most expensive science

project ever

Produces 15 petabytes of data per year(1 petabyte = 1 million gigabytes)

It works! Protons sent through rings in Sep 2008, first collisions on Nov 23, 2009

Project involved cooperation between 111 nations

Where to go from here

Might take up to 3 years to discover Higgs Boson(hypothetical particle)

Talks about upgrading the LHC as well as building even larger particle collider already happening

Resources Large Hadron Collider Machine Outreach -

http://lhc-machine-outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/

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

LHC UK - http://www.lhc.ac.uk/index.html

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider

CBC News - http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/11/24/tech-physics-large-hadron-collision.html