Large Hadron Collider

In search of the Higgs boson or so called "God Particle", that which explains how the Universe formed. CERN will be firing up the 17 mile circular particle accelerator later this year. In 1964 University of Edinburgh proffessor Peter Higgs (now 78) postulated these particles have mass but little else. They move through an invisible field of bosons sticking together to form larger mass, eventually creating everything we see today stars, planets, us. The team at CERN are 90% certain they will find Higgs boson. Proffessor Higgs hopes to have confirmation before he turns 80. A lawsuit has been filed in Hawaii to stop the LHC from starting for fear it could create a mini black hole and set off a chain of events that are unstoppable or producing a "stangelet" an extremely dense form of matter that could fall straight down through the earth. Or a "phase transition” could occur that would rip the “fabric of space itself”, creating a vacuum that would expand like a bubble and destroy all the atoms in our galaxy." The lead scientists have stated that these are "very,very unlikely."


Smashing atoms
— The European particle physics laboratory’s accelerator will smash beams of protons against one another at 0.999997828 times the speed of light. It is housed in a tunnel 17 miles long, about the same length as the London Underground’s Circle Line
— When the tunnel was cut, the ends met with only 1cm of error
— Each proton will go around the tunnel 11,245 times a second
— The proton beam will carry the equivalent energy of an aircraft carrier sailing at 11 knots
— The superconducting cables used to power the LHC would stretch around the Equator 6.8 times. All the filaments would stretch to the Sun and back five times, plus a few trips to the Moon
— The cooling apparatus could keep 140,000 fridges full of sausages at a temperature a little above absolute zero
— The beam pipes contain a vacuum similar to that found in space.
— Engineers look for leaks so small that they would cause a car tyre to go flat in 10,000 years
Source: Cern