Large Hadron Collider

From Wikislippy

Current revision as of 16:18, 22 September 2008

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons. To date the LHC has cost 6.7 billion trillion dollars.

[edit] History

The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland in Europe. It is funded by and built in collaboration with over eight thousand physicists from over eighty-five countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories.

[edit] What It Does

The LHC is a ring buried somewhere in Europe. Inside the ring, protons (invisible particles) are fired out of a cannon at over 65 miles a second. A second proton is fired at the same speed toward the first. Eventually, the two protons will meet at a combined speed of 130 miles a second and cause a black hole.

[edit] Purpose

One proposed purpose is that it is being used to kill off all the human-eating aliens in the universe by destroying their primary food source.

Another theory was that they were trying to recreate the "big band theory."

Apparently the real reason is to produce the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is a hypothetical particle that does not exist.

[edit] Safety

there have been questions concerning the safety of the Large Hadron Collider in the media and even through the courts. People have expressed concerns over the safety of the LHC, and have attempted to halt the beginning of the experiments through petitions to the US and European Courts. These opponents say that the LHC experiments have the potential to create low velocity micro black holes that could grow in mass or release dangerous radiation leading to doomsday scenarios, such as the destruction of the Earth. Other claimed potential risks include the creation of theoretical particles called strangelets, magnetic monopoles and vacuum bubbles.

These risk assessments of catastrophic scenarios at the LHC have attracted widespread media attention and sparked fears among the public. On September 10 2008, a 16-year-old girl from India committed suicide, having become distressed about predictions of an impending "doomsday" made on an Indian news channel covering the LHC. The Large Hadron Collider team revealed that they had received death threats and threatening emails and phone calls demanding the experiment be halted.

[edit] Today

The LHC is operational and is presently in the process of being prepared for collisions. The first beams were circulated through the collider on 10 September 2008, and the first high-energy collisions are expected to take place after 6-8 weeks.

On September 20 the collider broke and is expected to be in repairs for two months.