How The Large Hadron Collider Works Video

I hear about the Large Hadron Collider on the news now and again, usually because it has broken down again. The BBC news always say it is trying to 're-create the conditions of the big bang.' This sounds a bit risky so I thought I'd find out what it does in more detail.

How the LHC works 

The LHC is the largest and highest energy particle accelerator in the world. It is housed in a circular tunnel 17 miles long, and is buried underground on the border of France and Swizerland. The tunnel consists of 2 adjacent parallel beam pipes that intersect at 4 points. The adjacent beams contain particles which are being fired in opposite directions. Where the paths intersect, the particles collide, and the collision is analysed.

Over 1600 superconducting magnets are used to steer the beam of particles around the tunnel. Liquid helium is used to cool the magnets to their operating temperature of -271.25 °C. Particles are accelerated around the tunnel up to 11,000 revolutions per second.

There are some very sci-fi names for some of the LHC components. Prior to injection into the main beams, particles are subjected to the linear particle accelerator, proton synchrotron booster, and super proton synchrotron.

The aims of the LHC 

The main purpose of the collider is to find out if the Higgs Boson exists. This is a massive scalar elementary particle, which the particle physics 'standard model' predicts should exist. If the Higgs Boson is proven to exist, it would help explain the origin of mass in the universe. The analysis of particle collisions is hoped to prove its existence, as this shows the conditions of the big bang on a tiny scale. There are other questions the LHC may answer such as, 'are there extra dimensions of the universe?' - as suggested by string theory.

The first tests with the LHC began successfully on September 10th 2008, with a beam sucessfully guided around the length of the tunnel. On Sep 18th a fault with the wiring on one of the magnets caused a major incident resulting in massive electric sparks, causing liquid helium leakage. Many of the magnets and other equipment needed to be rebuilt or replaced. This has set back the project for around a year and cost around £23 million to replace magnets and other components.

More recently a bird dropped some bread into the high voltage supply above ground. This caused more delays in the LHC program, as systems had to be shut down and restarted. It is hoped the experiments will be restarted sometime next week.

This video explains how the LHC works quite nicely. There are a few theories spread about the internet that the LHC is an 'abhorrent device' that 'god is trying to prevent' through the recent failures. Other people think it will create black holes which will destroy the planet. I'm sure it will be fine though, we may find out in a few days!

How the LHC works video 

Published - Wed 11th Nov 2009 14:53:33