I've wanted to know more about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
for ages. It's so big and mysterious! Why is it there? What does it
do? The brilliant Large
Hadron Rap helped me understand a bit more about it.
This video, featuring Professor Brian Cox, does a good job of
explaining the LHC too. Sadly, there's no rapping!
So, the LHC is the largest and most complicated scientific
experiment ever attempted. Pretty impressive!
Large Hadron Collider. Photo by
John
McNab.
But that's not all...
The LHC is:
- 174 metres underground
- A whopping 27 kilometres in circumference - so big it runs
underneath the France-Swiss border, near Geneva
- Filled with 2000 giant electromagnets that are at 1.9 Kelvin.
That's colder than the space between the stars!
ATLAS experiment - part of the
Large Hadron Collider. Photo by Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory.
Why do we want to know about the Big Bang?
Finding out the conditions that were present just after the Big
Bang can explain the physics of our universe now - why our universe
is expanding.
Particle physicists want to use the LHC to find the Higgs boson.
Their current model of particle physics says that there should be a
Higgs boson, somewhere! Particle physicists think the Higgs boson
is the reason the universe is expanding.
Now particle physicists need to find the Higgs boson to prove
their theory. If they don't find it, or they find a different
particle, the theory will need to be changed.
Professor Brian Cox talking
about the Large Hadron Collider. Photo by Dave
Pearson.
It's an exciting time in physics. Our knowledge of the universe
is changing and increasing. Who knows what we'll find out next! As
Professor Brian Cox says, "Science is about exploring. The only way
to uncover the secrets of the universe is to go and look".
Main image by Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory.