Thursday, 15 October 2015

The Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and most powerful particle collider. It’s the largest, arguably most complex facility ever built. Along with being the largest single machine in the world. The LHC has and will continue to challenge our (as a species) current idea of physics. The large hadron collider sits in The European Organization for Nuclear Research’s (CERN) accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 27-kilometer ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way.  It first started up on the 10 September 2008, and after a closure and refit in 2013 it opened again in 2015 after being extensively upgraded, including a beam power enhancement of ~six times its original power.

Back in 2011 two teams at the Large Hadron Collider looking for the Higgs Boson announced that they had finally seen results which could suggest the Higgs Boson particle existed, The Higgs Boson is a particle that gives mass to other particles which, if real would lead to much more interesting discoveries including the source of the creation of the universe. Around Christmas that year the same teams, announced that they had finally seen results which could suggest the Higgs Boson particle existed; however, they did not know for certain if this was true. But on 4 July 2012, the teams at the Large Hadron Collider declared that they had discovered a particle to which most signs point to being the Higgs Boson. March the following year the teams had done much more testing, and announced that they were within acceptable error margin and that the new particle was a Higgs Boson.

This discovery is undoubtedly one of the most scientifically significant events in the history of the Earth.

Many people believe (or believed) that the Large Hadron Collider could set off a chain reaction that could lead to Earth's destruction. For more information check out the following link:




No comments:

Post a Comment