Large Hadron confider

Here's an older pic - but still awesome - of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) at the CERN institute. For my money, CERN is the most excellent place on Earth, since its a pure research endeavour aimed at pursuing the biggest questions. Funded mostly by the EU, but with some American aid. Alas, most of the USA R&D budgets these days go to one thing and one thing only: WAR! And military research.

For you wags: A hadron is the name given to a subset of composite particles, made up of baryons and mesons. You in fact now some baryons right now - the proton and the neutron. 

The idea behind a particle accelerator is quite simple: You send some particles one way, and some the opposite way, around a loop. Spin them up faster and faster till they get close to the speed of light, then smash them together. The energy released by this collision creates - for an iota of time - particles that we can never normally see. Particles that would have been created in the early Universe, before it cooled and spread.

Thus, the importance of LHC experiment (please note there are many more experiments going on at CERN than just the LHC, though the LHC is the big one): It's the biggest collider in the world, and thus can generate more speed; more speed equals more energy, and with more energy comes the brief creation of particles closer and closer to the Big Bang.

Thus, it's an attempt to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang.

I mentioned below the importance of the Higgs Boson in all this - to wit: Theory states it is this Higgs Boson that gives mass to everything. Think of the Higgs Boson as a field of grass - some objects pass through the grass like it's not there. In this analogy, these objects have no mass - like Photons; other objects get slowed down by the grass, and we call this slowing down "mass". You, for instance.

Hitherto, the Higgs has never been detected. Theory only. It is the LHC which will allow us for the first time to see it. Or not.

Now, you may have heard the doomsayers declaring the LHC would destroy the world by creating a small Black Hole, which would quickly grow and then consume the Earth, then the Solar System, etc.


But this is patently ridiculous, as there's not nearly enough energy to do so; plus, if microscopic black holes do indeed exist, than they exist right now, all around us, and haven't seemingly destroyed us yet. So, pshaw to that theory! Though it would make a fun Sci-Fi disaster movie.


But I suppose it is possible that not only will the LHC discover the Higgs, but microscopic Black Holes as well. 

All things are scaled

By scaled, for example, imagine this picture represents the gravity wells of Blackholes, where the clouds represent our space/time, and the funnels represent gravity wells caused by the Blackhole.

At this point in time, we know the following about Blackholes:

- Giant versions of them exist at the center of every galaxy.

- At the center point of a blackhole, our physics breaks down and we understand nothing. This is the definition of a Singularity, just like the one that birthed our Universe. I don't think that's a co-incidence.

- They exist in microscopic form, coming into and swiftly exiting out of existence all around us.

- No one really knows what a blackhole is, other than a phenomena we observe defined by gravity in the extreme - extreme into the Singularity, where gravity is so dense there is no more matter, no more energy. Where it goes, what happens, no one knows.

Everyone's betting multiple dimensions, however. So, consider.

Oops, I forgot this method of apocalypse

This happy looking fellow is the CERN Large Hadron Collider*, and it will soon conduct its first large scale test.

The LHC has a circumference of 17 miles, and is buried on average some 150 feet underground.

The purpose of the LHC is, according to the Wiki, to find out the following:

• Is the popular Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses in the Standard Model realised in nature? If so, how many Higgs bosons are there, and what are their masses?^[10]
• Will the more precise measurements of the masses of the quarks continue to be mutually consistent within the Standard Model?
• Do particles have supersymmetric ("SUSY") partners?^[1]
• Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?^[1] See also CP-violation.
• Are there extra dimensions indicated by theoretical gravitons, as predicted by various models inspired by string theory, and can we "see" them?
• What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?^[1]
• Why is gravity so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces?

All sounds great. But, there is the matter of "micro black holes, strangelets, vacuum bubbles and magnetic monopoles", and I can tell you from experience, all it takes is a few micro black holes and strangelets to ruin your day.


But I kid! I'm sure this science project won't destroy the earth and/or the solar system.

Fun related facts: Did you know that the scientists testing the first nuclear bombs could not be sure if the nuclear reaction they would cause would cascade into a chain-reaction, destroying all matter?

Glad that didn't turn out to be true...


*also known in other circles as the Large Hardon Collider