CERN
A VERY SHORT EXPLANATION OF THE LHC (LARGE HADRON COLLIDER) AT
CERN(Centre Europen pour la Recherche Nucleaire), GENVA,
Switzerland
This presentation was composed in order to qualify for teaching
in English language at the university of BurgosAlfonso de la Fuente
Ruiz, 2011
What is the LHC?
A huge engineering project
Civil engineering at its best, computer science supporting and
theoretical physics leading the way into the unknown.
The power of the atom, unleashed
After the sad events at Hiroshima & Nagasaki, Robert
Oppenheimer led the physics community towards a happier goal, for
retribution
A European Union endeavour
lvaro de Rjula, representative spanish manager in theoretical
physics at CERN
The Lord of the Rings
Subatomic particles are accelerated at practically the speed of
light along a 27 kms. circular tunnel right under the city of Genva
(Switzerland)
LHC lies 175 m underground
CERN employs 1/3 students
Smashing things together
Hadron collisions being registered in 3D (full-res.)
The particle zoo
A quest for the Higgs boson?
Black Hole danger? No way!
But why not?
Safety of particle collisions at the
Large Hadron Collider:
Hawking's calculation and more general quantum mechanical
arguments predict that micro black holes evaporate almost
instantaneously. Additional safety arguments beyond those based on
Hawking radiation were given in the papers, which showed that in
hypothetical scenarios with stable black holes that could damage
Earth, such black holes would have been produced by cosmic rays and
would have already destroyed known astronomical objects such as the
Earth, Sun, neutron stars, or white dwarfs. Further, microscopic
black holes generated from a particle accelerator are very small in
size and are expected to have a high velocity, making it impossible
for them to accrete a dangerously large amount of mass before
leaving the earth for good.
The World Wide Web
was created at CERN
Tim Berners-Lee, 1989
Sept. 2008: LHC damaged!
Pictures below, show two of the most severely broken
interconnects, which are between the magnets in LHC sectors three
and four. The superconducting magnets, used to direct and focus the
proton beams in the experiment, are cooled by liquid helium. An
electrical fault caused the liquid helium to leak, resulting in a
need for repairs that put the experiment out of action until at
least summer 2009.
2011: Currently a success!
- Scientific output
- Luminosity record
- Intrntl. cooperation
- Higgs' spotting rumoured as of april 2011
Thank you!
