The Large Hadron Collider (2024)

FAQs

What exactly does the Large Hadron Collider do? ›

For part of each year, the LHC provides collisions between lead ions, recreating conditions similar to those just after the Big Bang. When heavy ions collide at high energies they form for an instant the quark-gluon plasma, a “fireball” of hot and dense matter that can be studied by the experiments.

In 2013, physicists confirmed that they'd found a Higgs boson with a mass of roughly 126 giga-electron volts (GeV) -- the total mass of about 126 protons (mass-energy equivalence lets physicists use electron volts as a unit of mass) [sources: Das].

What is CERN's mission? At CERN, our work helps to uncover what the universe is made of and how it works. We do this by providing a unique range of particle accelerator facilities to researchers, to advance the boundaries of human knowledge.

Underground visits to the LHC experiments are rare, and visits to the LHC itself are not available. When booking your visit, you can request a particular itinerary. The CERN Visits Service will try to accommodate your request, but there are no guarantees.

The LHC typically uses protons, which are made up of quarks and gluons. It energises the protons by accelerating them through a narrow circular pipe that is 27 km long. Simply put, this pipe encircles two D-shaped magnetic fields, created by almost 9,600 magnets.

While some particle accelerators are used for research, most are used for other purposes. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), more than 30,000 accelerators are in use around the world.

There is a collider at Brookhaven National Lab right now called RHIC, which is a relativistic hadron collider.

Originally estimated to cost $4.4 billion, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to kill the project in the summer of 1992, when costs had risen to $8.25 billion, but it was saved by the Senate, although a $100-million cut below requested funds put the project further behind schedule, increasing its costs even more.

Hadrons are the heaviest particles. It is composed of two or more quarks that are held strongly by the electromagnetic force. Every individual quark has functional electric charges, these combine such that hadrons carry a net integer electric charge.

The name CERN is derived from the acronym for the French "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire", or European Council for Nuclear Research, a provisional body founded in 1952 with the mandate of establishing a world-class fundamental physics research organization in Europe.

What was the biggest discovery at CERN? ›

Exploring this new sector of nature has been a core business of CERN ever since, leading to the discovery of the W and Z bosons in 1983 and culminating with the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

The CERN Council is the highest authority of the Organization and has responsibility for all-important decisions. It controls CERN's activities in scientific, technical and administrative matters. It approves programmes of activity, adopts the budgets and reviews expenditure.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was constructed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in the same 27-km (17-mile) tunnel that housed its Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP). The tunnel is circular and is located 50–175 metres (165–575 feet) belowground on the border between France and Switzerland.

This tunnel lies deep underground to protect it from cosmic rays that might interfere with the research taking place. The tunnel and the LHC it houses form a big circle. That's because particles can pick up more speed when they're going in a circle versus a straight line.

The tunnels at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) are part of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and are located underground, ranging from about 50 to 175 meters deep (about 165 to 575 feet).

This powerful particle accelerator is known as the Large Hadron Collider. It's where some of modern physics' most significant discoveries have been made, including the 2012 identification of the Higgs boson, the culmination of a 50-year search. The Higgs particle gives mass to all other particles.

The media calls the Higgs boson the God particle because, according to the theory laid out by Scottish physicist Peter Higgs and others in 1964, it's the physical proof of an invisible, universe-wide field that gave mass to all matter right after the Big Bang, forcing particles to coalesce into stars, planets, and ...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) plays with Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = mc², to transform matter into energy and then back into different forms of matter. But on rare occasions, it can skip the first step and collide pure energy – in the form of electromagnetic waves.