Quantcast
Channel: Physics
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 778

Everything you need to know but were too afraid to ask about the biggest machine on Earth — the newly revamped and restarted Large Hadron Collider

$
0
0

lhc, large hadron collider, cernThe Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest machine ever built, restarted on April 5, and it's powering up to uncover some potentially game-changing discoveries in physics.

The LHC brought us the Higgs boson during its first run in 2012, and now in it's new and improved state, physicists think it has the potential to uncover even more exciting particles.

Physicists first proposed the idea for the LHC in the 1980s and construction was finally completed in 2008 at CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. It's one of several particle accelerators at CERN, but it stole the limelight with its discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 and the documentary "Particle Fever" that detailed the discovery. Now it's second run has again captured world wide attention.

But what does this $10 billion machine do? And what does it actually look like on the inside? 

Simply put, the LHC is a 17-mile underground ring-shaped tunnel lined with supercooled magnets, accelerator tubes, and huge cameras that snap photos of proton beams crashing into one another at nearly the speed of light. It's so huge you can fit the whole of central London inside its ring.



The LHC is located near Geneva, Switzerland. It was first proposed in the 1980s and the idea was ridiculed by many for being too grandiose. However, the proposal eventually gained traction and the LHC was completed in 2008.



There's no machine on Earth quite like it. “The first time I ever saw it I remember walking in and just being stunned,” Monica Dunford, a physicist who works at the LHC, said in the trailer for the documentary "Particle Fever."“Five stories completely filled with custom-designed, hand-soldered microelectronics.”



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 778

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>