The Portal: Writings
The Large Hadron Collider
By Emma Simpson
CERN ( The European Organization for Nuclear Research) is situated on the Swiss-French border near Geneva. It is home to the LHC ( The Large Hadron Collider) the biggest particle smashing machine made by man doing the worlds biggest science experiment.
Not only is the LHC the worlds largest particle accelerator but it is also 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 120 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K) even colder than outer space!!
They are accelerating two beams of protons in opposite direction smash them together at 99.9999991% the speed of light. The protons will race round the ring at 11 245 times a second, altogether some 600 million collisions will take place every second.
The LHC's main objective is to find out if the Higgs Boson exists. The standard model says it should as it has been predicted to: the Higgs is responsible for the mass of most particles. If the Higgs is not found then we will have to rethink everything we currently know about the universe in other words we will have to rewrite the standard model.
· March the 30th 2010 they reached 7TeV for the first time. This means that each beam was 3.5TeV this was a massive achievement for them.
· This is the time line: 7 TeV run [2010 -> 2012], upgrade [2013], 14 TeV run [2014-2016]
There is however a lot of excitement about other things that could be found like extra dimensions, micro black holes and supersymmetry. Of course there are people out there that still say the LHC will create a micro black hole that will move into the core of the earth and slowly grow eventually sucking the whole planet inwards. This is total nonsense they would decay quickly by Hawking Radiation.
Not only is the LHC the worlds largest particle accelerator but it is also 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 120 tonnes of liquid helium to bring them down to -271.3°C (1.9 K) even colder than outer space!!
They are accelerating two beams of protons in opposite direction smash them together at 99.9999991% the speed of light. The protons will race round the ring at 11 245 times a second, altogether some 600 million collisions will take place every second.
The LHC's main objective is to find out if the Higgs Boson exists. The standard model says it should as it has been predicted to: the Higgs is responsible for the mass of most particles. If the Higgs is not found then we will have to rethink everything we currently know about the universe in other words we will have to rewrite the standard model.
· March the 30th 2010 they reached 7TeV for the first time. This means that each beam was 3.5TeV this was a massive achievement for them.
· This is the time line: 7 TeV run [2010 -> 2012], upgrade [2013], 14 TeV run [2014-2016]
There is however a lot of excitement about other things that could be found like extra dimensions, micro black holes and supersymmetry. Of course there are people out there that still say the LHC will create a micro black hole that will move into the core of the earth and slowly grow eventually sucking the whole planet inwards. This is total nonsense they would decay quickly by Hawking Radiation.
The Cryogenics and Magnets:
There are a total of 9300 magnets inside. These magnets are superconducting: the LHC uses superconductors because it allows to use MUCH stronger electric currents and so make much stronger magnetic fields. If there was resistance then because of the heat generated from the charges bumping into the atoms, the cable would heat up rapidly. A quench is when part of a superconducting magnet for some reason heats up beyond the critical temperature above which it is no longer superconducting. This is what happened back in 2008 putting the machine out of action for 13 months. There are four main detectors ALICE, CMS, ATLAS and LHCb.
|  Magnets making up part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particule accelerator sit inside a tunnel 100m underground at CERN |
Here is a brief explanation of what each detectors is doing:
ALICE or A Large Ion Collider Experiment, is an experiment located at Point 2 on the LHC:
Purpose: ALICE is mainly interested in lead ion collisions. They will also be looking to study a "fluid" form matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang.
CMS or the Compact Muon Solenoid, is an experiment in the LHC, located at Point 5:
Purpose: CMS is one of two general-purpose experiment at the LHC that have been built to search for new physics. It is designed to detect a wide range of particles and phenomena produced in the LHC’s high-energy proton-proton and heavy-ion collisions.
ATLAS or A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS, is an experiment in the LHC, located at Point 1:
Purpose: The ATLAS detector measures 45 meters long it is about as half as big as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and more than 25 meters high and weighs about 7,000 tons that is the same as the Eiffel Tower or a hundred 747 jets. ATLAS will be used to look for signs of new physics.
LHCb or LHC Beauty, is an experiment in the LHC, located at Point 8:
Purpose: LHCb is designed to investigate scattering processes where b-quarks are produced. They will also make more precise measurements of how matter and antimatter behave differently from each other. This will explain a lot about what happened just after the Big Bang. This might help by explaining why matter and antimatter did not completely annihilate each other.
Professor Brian Cox works at CERN. Emma got to meet him in Newcastle on his Uncaged Monkey Tour.
How I became interested in the LHC...
Back in 2008 I heard about the LHC in the Sun Newspaper headlines: 'WORLD WILL END NEXT WEDNESDAY'. I freaked out so badly it just wasn't funny, the thing that scared me was the Black Hole thing. I was scared of there being nothing so for the next week I was in a bad way and then the night before I watching everything I could about it there was lots of stuff happening on the BBC, I was awake all night and one of my friends stayed we sat glued to the tv holding hands because I was convinced that we was gonna die ( feels kinda stupid now they wasn't even colliding). Anyways things settled down and then the next thing you hear is that the machine broke, this made me extremely happy I could relax but in the back on my mind I know it would be back at some point, I still followed what it was upto. Then I heard that in Nov 2009 it would be getting switched back on and do collisions. This freaked me out so badly it was unreal, I was following on Twitter so I sat by myself shaking and panicking about what was gonna happen, I am pleased I had a very big bottle of vodka handy LOL. From this point onwards it was my big turning point. Things was going good, then everything went down at CERN it was a computer failure I didn't of course know that at the time it was like omg what's happened so I went looking to see what i could find out, that when I came across The Portal I looked around and thought am not gonna fit in here but this is where I need to be so I joined and clicked with Chris the owner of the forum straight away within a week I was a guru, within a few months I was a mod and then about 6 months ago I was made adim this I am very proud of. In my eyes the Potral is the best place on the net for the latest up to date information on the LHC we can see what is going on 24/7 we get to view live collisions so it is perfect.
Back in Dec 2009 I thought I can either stay scared or I can face my fears head on. facing my fears head on is the path I chose, now it's not easy getting to grips with physics when you don't know nothing about maths, but with a lot of help and patients from a very nice bunch of guys I am doing great So lets talk about 30th March my 29th Birthday and the collision date for the first 3.5TeV beams omg I was so scared but being in chat with the guys helped me so much it's unreal, as the time got closer I was so freaking out,I was shaking and I had tears in my eyes I wasn't quite sure on how I should react but I managed so well i was really proud of myself I can never thank you the guys that was there with me for the support they gave me. As for now well I am steady enough that I can help other people that are scared and don't quite know what is going on, yeah I still have my freakots but if it's something I can reasearch then I do it and I do fast to calm myself as soon as possible and if I still have doubts I ask questions. And that is my very own personal journey to the LHCportal and maybe beyond.
http://www.lhcportal.com/
Back in Dec 2009 I thought I can either stay scared or I can face my fears head on. facing my fears head on is the path I chose, now it's not easy getting to grips with physics when you don't know nothing about maths, but with a lot of help and patients from a very nice bunch of guys I am doing great So lets talk about 30th March my 29th Birthday and the collision date for the first 3.5TeV beams omg I was so scared but being in chat with the guys helped me so much it's unreal, as the time got closer I was so freaking out,I was shaking and I had tears in my eyes I wasn't quite sure on how I should react but I managed so well i was really proud of myself I can never thank you the guys that was there with me for the support they gave me. As for now well I am steady enough that I can help other people that are scared and don't quite know what is going on, yeah I still have my freakots but if it's something I can reasearch then I do it and I do fast to calm myself as soon as possible and if I still have doubts I ask questions. And that is my very own personal journey to the LHCportal and maybe beyond.
http://www.lhcportal.com/
