Science Guide

Everyone had their eyes on the Large Hadron Collider on September 10th as they circulated the first particle beams under the Franco-Swiss border.

The LHC or Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator complex.  The particle accelerator has been utilized for hundreds of years, originally in the CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) of Ferdinand Braun (CNET 2007).  In this basic particle accelerator, an 'electron gun' produces a stream of electrons (negatively charged fundamental particles of matter) (CNET 2007).  These electrons are directed towards a flourescent screen by either an electric or magnetic field (Physics Online, 2006).  When the electrons 'collide' with the flourescent screen, the electrons' energy is released as light and, with repetition and multiplication of the aforementioned technique, images are produced upon the screen.  

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While most particle accelerators differ from the CRT in application, the fundamental basis is similar - particle accelerators utilise a charged particle and contain them at a high speed.  In the case of the CRT, the particles are collided with a flourescent screen.  In the case of the LHC, the particles are positively charged (protons) and are collided with eachother (BBC 2008).  

The LHC has been the brainchild of thousands of physicists from around the globe that congregated in Switzerland in order to learn more about the nature of matter.  The commonly acknowledged goal is the discovery of a theoretical fundamental particle known as the Higgs boson.  The Higgs is in a set of the elementary particles of matter, and is the only one that has not yet  been empirically observed (BBC 2007).  Besides hadrons like the proton and electron, other fundamental particles include the photon (mediates light and other electromagnetic forces) and the W and Z bosons (mediates weak force) (Physics Online 2008).  The key of the Higgs boson is that it will help researchers find the cause of the development of particle mass - seeing as to how the photon has no mass, the electron has negligable mass, the proton has considerable mass, and the W and Z bosons have large masses (Physics Online 2008).  The Higgs is thought to explain the reason that some particles have mass and others do not.  

CERN also hopes that the LHC will reveal more about the universe - for example, the nature of dark matter, the odd weakness of gravitational force, and the possibility of testing the models of the string theory, that predicted other dimensions (Physics Online 2008).

The science team at CERN were celebrating when the particles successfully went around the LHC, but their celebration was short lived. A few days later disaster occured when over a tonne of helium escaped (BBC 2008), warming up the superconducting magnets from 1.9 Kelvin to over 100 Kelvin. 

At first thought to be a small problem, it soon escalated into a more serious problem then they had anticipated. After hard work trying to identify the problem, the CERN team believes that there was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets. However, to find the problem they must go inside and try to fix the complex piece of machinery. However, doing this isn't as easy as it may sound. Since the superconducting magnets are cooled to 1.9 Kelvin, colder then space, the team must warm up the temperature to allow the team to go inside without being frozen to death.

The team has said this process takes atleast a week, then they must inspect the problem, fix it, and bring the temperature back down to 1.9 K. If the LHC is fixed by then, it will still be short lived due to the scheduled Winter shut down. The shut down is used to perform maintenance on the giant machine and to help save money on energy during the Winter months.