CERN and the Large Hadron Collider
Written By: Arman Momeni
The Large Hadron Collider, commonly known as LHC or the CERN Collider, is the world’s largest and undoubtably most powerful particle accelerator. This article from Science ReWired will explore particle accelerators, CERN, and the Large Hadron Collider.
CERN
CERN was founded in 1954 and sits on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. CERN was one of the first joint ventures in Europe and has now grown to house 23 member states.
CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research and is globally renown as one of the most promising sites for scientific research. CERN has one main goal: to dive deep beyond the visual world, and break down the basic constituents of matter. CERN helps provide research and a clearer understanding of how particles interact to help to provide insight on the true laws of nature. CERN is a powerhouse in all areas of scientific research and wants to push the boundaries of human knowledge by first understanding the building blocks of the universe.
CERN is filled with physicists and engineers who use the world’s largest and most intricate scientific instruments to break down matter and its fundamental particles. The specific devices housed at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors.
Particle Accelerators
Particle accelerators were first invented in the 1930s and were designed to investigate the structure of the atomic nucleus. The atom itself is already unfathomably small, and its nucleus is roughly 100,000 times smaller. This means that scientists cannot simply observe the nucleus and need to derive special experiments and instruments in order to understand it.
Particle accelerators generate an electric field that speeds up the particle, increasing its energy, and then use magnetic fields to control and focus them. Accelerators come in two forms: a ring, where a beam of particles travels in a continuous loop, or a line, where the particles travel from one end of the accelerator to the other. CERN’s plethora of resources allows them to join a number of accelerators together in order to create higher energy levels.
Detectors
While particle accelerators work towards providing energy to particles, detectors work towards gathering information about the particles. Detectors strive to find out about a particle’s speed, mass, or charge, which allows physicists to then work out a particle’s identity.
One innovative example of how physicists derive information about a particle can be found in their calculation of the momentum of a particle. Particles produced by collisions generally travel in straight lines, but in the presence of a magnetic field, they curve. Physicists use electromagnets to take advantage of this effect. After inducing a magnetic field, physicists use a particles curvature to presume its momentum; particles that have a high momentum travel in straighter lines, whereas particles with lower momentums move in a spiral pattern.
The Large Hadron Collider
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest particle accelerator. It was first put into action in the fall of 2008, and 15 years later is still the largest addition to CERN’s large complex of accelerators. The LHC is astonishingly large, consisting of a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets, and holds a number of accelerating structures that boost the energy of the particles along their long path.
Inside of the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at speeds close to the speed of light and then are manipulated to collide. The beams are highly controlled, traveling in opposite directions in two sperate pipes. They are guided around the accelerator using a plethora of superconducting electromagnets, which create a strong magnetic field. In order to efficiently conduct electricity without resistance or a large loss of energy, the magnets are chilled to -271.3 degrees Celsius, which is less than 2 degrees short of absolute zero.
As complicated as the LHC is, all of its controls are housed under one roof, which resides in the CERN Control Centre. Inside of the control centre, the particle beams are strictly controlled to collide at four locations around the accelerator ring. Each of the four locations are precisely selected to correspond with the four particle detectors inside of the LHC: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHCb.
Works Cited:
CERN accelerating science. CERN. (n.d.). https://home.cern/science/experiments/how-detector-works
How an accelerator works. CERN. (n.d.). https://home.cern/science/accelerators/how-accelerator-works
The large hadron collider. CERN. (n.d.-c). https://home.cern/science/accelerators/large-hadron-collider
