LHC
Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) is the world's largest
and highest-energy particle
accelerator, intended to collide
opposing particle beams of
either protons at an energy of
7 TeV per particle, or lead
nuclei at an energy of 574 TeV
per nucleus. It is expected
that it will address the most
fundamental questions of
physics, hopefully allowing
progress in understanding the
deepest laws of nature. The
LHC lies in a tunnel
27 kilometres (17 mi) in
circumference, as much as
175 metres (570 ft) beneath
the Franco-Swiss border near
Geneva, Switzerland.
On 10 September 2008, the proton
beams were successfully circulated in
the main ring of the LHC for the first
time. On 19 September 2008, the
operations were halted due to a serious
fault between two superconducting
bending magnets. Repairing the
resulting damage and installing
additional safety features took over a
year. On 20 November 2009 the proton
beams were successfully circulated
again, On 23 November 2009, the
first proton–proton collisions were
recorded, at the injection energy of 450
GeV per particle.On 18 December 2009
the LHC was shut down after its initial
commissioning run, which achieved
proton collision energies of 2.36 TeV,
with multiple bunches of protons
circulating for several hours and data
from over one million proton-proton
collisions. The LHC was down until
February 2010.
Overview of LHC
1. The LHC is part of a project helmed by the European
Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.
The LHC joins CERN's accelerator complex outside of Geneva,
Switzerland.
2. Once it's switched on, the LHC will hurl beams of protons and
ions at a velocity approaching the speed of light. The LHC will
cause the beams to collide with each other, and then record
the resulting events caused by the collision. Scientists hope
that these events will tell us more about how the universe
began and what it's made of.
LHC’s fields of Interest
1. In an attempt to understand our universe, including how it works and its actual
structure, scientists proposed a theory called the standard model. This theory tries to
define and explain the fundamental particles that make the universe what it is. It
combines elements from Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum theory. It also
deals with three of the four basic forces of the universe: strong nuclear force, weak
nuclear force and electromagnetic force. It does not address the effects of gravity,
the fourth fundamental force.
2. The Standard Model makes several predictions about the universe, many of which
seem to be true according to various experiments. But there are other aspects of
the model that remain unproven. One of those is a theoretical particle called the
Higgs boson particle.
3. The Higgs boson particle may answer questions about mass. Why does matter
have mass? Scientists have identified particles that have no mass, such as
neutrinos.
4. Another question scientists have about matter deals with early conditions in the
universe. During the earliest moments of the universe, matter and energy were coupled.
Just after matter and energy separated, particles of matter and antimatter annihilated
each other.
5. Dark matter might also play an important role in LHC research. Our current
understanding of the universe suggests that the matter we can observe only accounts
for about 4 percent of all the matter that must exist. When we look at the movement of
galaxies and other celestial bodies, we see that their motions suggest there's much more
matter in the universe than we can detect. Scientists named this undetectable material
dark matter. Together, observable matter and dark matter could account for about 25
percent of the universe. The other three-quarters would come from a force called dark
energy, a hypothetical energy that contributes to the expansion of the universe.
Scientists hope that their experiments will either provide further evidence for the existence
of dark matter and dark energy or provide evidence that could support an alternate
theory.
Inside the collider
1. First, you fire two beams of particles along two pathways, one going clockwise and the other
going counterclockwise. You accelerate both beams to near the speed of light. Then, you direct
both beams toward each other and watch what happens.
2. The equipment necessary to achieve that goal is far more complex. The LHC is just one part of the
overall CERN particle accelerator facility. Before any protons or ions enter the LHC, they've
already gone through a series of steps.
3. First, scientists must strip electrons from hydrogen atoms to produce protons. Then, the protons
enter the LINAC2, a machine that fires beams of protons into an accelerator called the PS
Booster. These machines use devices called radio frequency cavities to accelerate the protons.
4. Once a beam of protons reaches the right energy level, the PS Booster injects it into another
accelerator called the Super Proton Synchotron (SPS).
5. The beams continue to pick up speed. By now, beams have divided into bunches. Each bunch
contains 1.1 x 1011 protons, and there are 2,808 bunches per beam [source: CERN]. The SPS
injects beams into the LHC, with one beam traveling clockwise and the other going
counterclockwise.
6. Inside the LHC, the beams continue to accelerate. This takes about 20 minutes. At top speed, the
beams make 11,245 trips around the LHC every second. The two beams converge at one of the
six detector sites positioned along the LHC.
7. When two protons collide, they break apart into even smaller particles. That includes subatomic
particles called quarks and a mitigating force called gluon
Scientists way of computing data gathered
With 15 petabytes of data (that's 15,000,000 gigabytes) gathered by the
LHC detectors every year, scientists have an enormous task ahead of them.
Even using a supercomputer, processing that much information could take
thousands of hours. Meanwhile, the LHC would continue accumulating even
more data
CERN's solution to this problem is the LHC Computing Grid. The grid is a
network of computers, each of which can analyze a chunk of data on its own.
Once a computer completes its analysis, it can send the findings on to a
centralized computer and accept a new chunk of data. As long as scientists
can divide the data up into chunks, the system works well. Within the
computer industry this approach is called grid computing
Using a special kind of software called midware, the network of computers will be
able to store and analyze data for every experiment conducted at the LHC. The
structure for the system is organized into tiers:
Tier 0 is CERN's computing system, which will first process information and
divide it into chunks for the other tiers.
Twelve Tier 1 sites located in several countries will accept data from CERN over
dedicated computer connections. These connections will be able to transmit data at
10 gigabytes per second. The Tier 1 sites will further process data and divide it
up to send further down the grid.
More than 100 Tier 2 sites will connect with the Tier 1 sites. Most of these sites
are universities or scientific institutions. Each site will have multiple computers
available to process and analyze data. As each processing job completes, the sites
will push data back up the tier system. The connection between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is
a standard network connection.
Any Tier 2 site can access any Tier 1 site. The reason for that is to allow research
institutions and universities the chance to focus on specific information and
research.
Will the LHC Destroy the World?
The LHC will allow scientists to observe particle collisions at an energy level far
higher than any previous experiment. Some people worry that such powerful
reactions could cause serious trouble for the Earth.
One fear is that the LHC could produce black holes. Black holes are regions in
which matter collapses into a point of infinite density.
In contrast, the black holes astronomers study result from an entire star collapsing
in on itself. There's a big difference between the mass of a star and that of a proton.
Another concern is that the LHC will produce an exotic (and so far hypothetical)
material called strangelets. One possible trait of strangelets is particularly
worrisome. Cosmologists theorize that strangelets could possess a powerful
gravitational field that might allow them to convert the entire planet into a lifeless
hulk.
Another theoretical particle the LHC might generate is a magnetic monopole
Higgs’ Bosson
A major breakthrough in particle physics came in the
1970s when physicists realized that there are very close
ties between two of the four fundamental forces –
namely, the weak force and the electromagnetic
force. The two forces can be described within the same
theory, which forms the basis of the Standard Model. This
‘unification’ implies that electricity, magnetism, light and
some types of radioactivity are all manifestations of a
single underlying force called, unsurprisingly, the
electroweak force. But in order for this unification to work
mathematically, it requires that the force-carrying
particles have no mass. We know from experiments that
this is not true, so physicists Peter Higgs, Robert Brout
and François Englert came up with a solution to solve this
conundrum.
They suggested that all particles had
no mass just after the Big Bang.
As the Universe cooled and the
temperature fell below a critical
value, an invisible force field called
the ‘Higgs field’ was formed
A Feynman diagram of one way together with the associated ‘Higgs
the Higgs boson may be boson’. The field prevails throughout
produced at the LHC. Here, two the cosmos: any particles that
quarks each emit a W or Z
boson, which combine to make a interact with it are given a mass via
neutral Higgs. the Higgs boson. The more they
interact, the heavier they become,
whereas particles that never interact
are left with no mass at all.
ATLAS Experiment
1. ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the six particle detector experiments
2. ATLAS is designed as a general-purpose detector. When the proton beams
produced by the Large Hadron Collider interact in the center of the detector, a variety
of different particles with a broad range of energies may be produced. Rather than
focusing on a particular physical process, ATLAS is designed to measure the broadest
possible range of signals.
3. ATLAS is intended to investigate many different types of physics that might become
detectable in the energetic collisions of the LHC. Some of these are confirmations or
improved measurements of the Standard Model, while many others are searches for
new physical theories.
CMS
The CMS experiment uses a general-purpose detector to investigate
a wide range of physics, including the search for the Higgs boson,
extra dimensions, and particles that could make up dark matter.
Although it has the same scientific goals as the ATLAS experiment, it
uses different technical solutions and design of its detector
magnet system to achieve these.
CMS detector
Size: 21 m long, 15 m wide and 15 m high.
Weight: 12 500 tonnes
Design: barrel plus end caps
Location: Cessy, France.
ALICE
ALICE is the acronym for A Large Ion Collider Experiment, one of the
largest experiments in the world devoted to research in the physics of matter
at an infinitely small scale.
The ALICE Experiment is going in search of answers to fundamental
questions, using the extraordinary tools provided by the LHC:
1. What happens to matter when it is heated to 100,000 times the
temperature at the centre of the Sun ?
2. Why do protons and neutrons weigh 100 times more than the quarks they
are made of ?
3. Can the quarks inside the protons and neutrons be freed ?
ADVANTAGES
The LHC is meant to help answer a lot of questions, not just
the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
*Are electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak
nuclear force just different manifestations of a single unified
force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories?
* Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than
the other three fundamental forces?
* What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?
•.
Construction accidents and delays
On 25 October 2005, a technician was killed in the LHC tunnel when
a crane load was accidentally dropped.
On 27 March 2007 a cryogenic magnet support broke during a
pressure test involving one of the LHC's inner triplet (focusing
quadrupole) magnet assemblies, provided by Fermilab and KEK.
Problems occurred on 19 September 2008 during powering tests of
the main dipole circuit, when an electrical fault in the bus between
magnets caused a rupture and a leak of six tonnes of liquid helium.
Popular culture
The novel Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown, involves antimatter created at the
LHC to be used in a weapon against the Vatican.
CERN employee Katherine McAlpine's "Large Hadron Rap" surpassed 5 million
YouTube views
.
The novel FlashForward, by Robert J. Sawyer, involves the search for the Higgs
boson at the LHC. CERN published a "Science and Fiction" page interviewing
Sawyer and physicists about the book and the TV series based on it.
