Large Hadron Collider
- "LHC" redirects here. For the pop group, see Les Horribles Cernettes
| Inside the LHC tunnel, where superconducting magnets are now being installed. | |
| Intersecting Storage Rings | CERN, 1971–1984 |
| Super Proton Synchrotron | CERN, 1976–1984 |
| Tevatron | Fermilab, 1987–2009 |
| Superconducting Super Collider | cancelled in 1993 |
| Large Hadron Collider | CERN, 2007–2020s |
| Very Large Hadron Collider | mid-to-late 21st century |
The Large Hadron Collider (short LHC) is a particle accelerator and collider located at CERN. It is currently under construction and scheduled to start operation in 2007. It will become the world's largest particle accelerator. It uses the 27 km circumference tunnel created for the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider. In contrast to the previous it will collide protons (one type of hadron particle) instead of electrons and positrons. The protons used will have an energy of 7 TeV each (total collision energy of 14 TeV). Five experiments will be built to utilize the LHC. Two of them, ATLAS and CMS are large, "general purpose" particle detectors. The other three (LHCb, ALICE, and TOTEM) are smaller and more specialized.
The LHC can also be used to collide heavy ions such as Lead (Pb) (collision energy will be 1150 TeV).
Physicists hope to use the collider to answer the following questions:
- What is mass? (We know how to measure it - but what is it?)
- What is the origin of mass of particles? (In particular, does the Higgs Boson exist?)
- What is the origin of mass of baryons? (By creating the quark-gluon plasma one will test the non-perturbative origin of a large fraction of the mass of the universe)
- Why do elementary particles have different masses? (I.e., do particles interact with a Higgs field?)
- We know that 95% of the universe's mass is not made of matter as we know it. What is it? (I.e. what is dark matter, dark energy?)
- Do supersymmetric (SUSY) particles exist?
- Are there extra dimensions, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?
- Are there additional violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?
The LHC is of immense size and represents a huge, and potentially dangerous, engineering task. While running, the total energy stored in the magnets is 10 GJ, and in beam 725 MJ. Loss of only 10−7 of the beam is sufficient to quench a superconducting magnet, while the beam dump must discharge an energy equivalent to a considerable concentration of explosives.
On October 25, 2005, a technician was killed in the LHC tunnel when a crane load was accidentally dropped. [1],[2]
See also
External links
- LHC - The Large Hadron Collider webpage
- New Physics at 5 TeV
- The Alice experiment
- Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Main Page
- Compact Muon Solenoid Page (U.S. Collaboration)
- Energising the quest for 'big theory'
- LCG - The LHC Computing Grid webpage
- The Large Hadron Collider ATLAS Experiment - Virtual Reality (VR) photography panoramas (requires Quicktime)
