View of an LHC interconnector
Image: CERN
Source: CERN
Today the world’s largest particle accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), will be launched at CERN in Switzerland.
The LHC is built in a 27-kilometre-long ring buried 100 metres below the ground. Magnets, cooled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute zero, will accelerate bunches of protons in opposite directions around the ring. Every time two bunches pass each other, some of the protons will collide at very high energy.
When the experiment is fully operational, there will be around 100 million collisions per second. However the first beams will be circulated around the accelerator in only one direction so there won’t be any collisions for a few weeks yet.
The high energy of these collisions is the same as that found at very high temperature and pressure, such as the conditions at the earliest moments of the Universe. Recreating these conditions will allow scientists to learn more about the fundamental nature of matter and about the history of the Universe.
Some people have wondered whether the high energies involved could create a miniscule black hole. However, cosmic rays with much higher energies strike the Earth’s atmosphere every day and the history of the Earth shows no signs of a black hole being made. Even if tiny black holes could be created, they should evaporate within a tiny fraction of a second after they are created.
Museum Victoria and the University of Melbourne are holding a function sponsored by Polycom to mark the launch of this experiment, including a video hook-up with the experiment half an hour after its start.