lokase
03-13-2007, 10:02 AM
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located 100 meters below the border of France and Switzerland is set to go online later this year. The 27km oval tunnel represents the largest human experiment being built today.
The LHC uses a massive network of super conducting magents, cryogenic systems, gargantuan detectors and computers to smash proton beams into one another at velocities just under the speed of light.
When the protons smash into one another they explode into the primordial elements of the universe (i.e. - the things that make up atoms). These elements are the same elements that existed immediatly after the big bang and have since collesced into what we see today in the Universe.
The main focus of the worlds largest science experiment is to attempt to find the very elusive and as of yet to be discovered Higgs Boson. Proving that the Higgs Boson exists and more importantly has mass will propel scientists understanding of physics and the universe into a new era.
Try the wiki first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider (check out the Saftey Concerns section =) )
Next you can step up to the communications website:
http://www.interactions.org/LHC/
Construction images of this massive machine can be viewed here:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Photos
Then if you are feeling really nerdy you can check out the main website:
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/
I am still in total awe of the size and complexity of this experiment, the physics behind it, the systems required to make it run and the mind blowing numbers involved when the collisions start occuring late this year and into 2008.
Cheers,
The LHC uses a massive network of super conducting magents, cryogenic systems, gargantuan detectors and computers to smash proton beams into one another at velocities just under the speed of light.
When the protons smash into one another they explode into the primordial elements of the universe (i.e. - the things that make up atoms). These elements are the same elements that existed immediatly after the big bang and have since collesced into what we see today in the Universe.
The main focus of the worlds largest science experiment is to attempt to find the very elusive and as of yet to be discovered Higgs Boson. Proving that the Higgs Boson exists and more importantly has mass will propel scientists understanding of physics and the universe into a new era.
Try the wiki first:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider (check out the Saftey Concerns section =) )
Next you can step up to the communications website:
http://www.interactions.org/LHC/
Construction images of this massive machine can be viewed here:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/collection/Photos
Then if you are feeling really nerdy you can check out the main website:
http://lhc.web.cern.ch/lhc/
I am still in total awe of the size and complexity of this experiment, the physics behind it, the systems required to make it run and the mind blowing numbers involved when the collisions start occuring late this year and into 2008.
Cheers,