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CERN gearing-up for next attempt at discovering the God particle
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Large Hadron Collider (LHC) may discover the "God particle" Photo: Yahoo Images
On the border that separates France and Switzerland, 328 feet under the ground lies the 17-mile long, $10 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This machine has received international funding and is maintained by the CERN, or European Organization for Nuclear Research.
The purpose of this "super machine," is to replicate the beginnings of the universe, and discover what many physicists have deemed, "the God particle."
The LHC will accomplish this by generating nearly one billion collisions between protons every second, with the energy of 14 trillion electron volts.
Scientists hope that by creating the conditions found during the beginnings of the universe, they will be able to resolve fundamental problems such as the disconnect between Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.
So far these experiments have run into nothing but problems. In September of last year the LHC was set to go full run when one of the 25,000 magnet-joints came loose and caused the melting of vital equipment in the LHC that stopped operations for over one year.
Last week the LHC was being reactivated when apparently a bird flew overhead and dropped debris into the accelerator that caused the machine to shut down. These failures and troubles have led to many thinking that the project is jinxed, opposed by God, himself or even being stopped by "influence from the future."
The last theory has caught on with many physicists who say, jokingly, that they only half believe it. Scientists do however assert that many problems are expected from machinery that is "...really a wonder of science and technology to build such a large accelerator, a 27km-long machine that works at the precision of a fraction of the diameter of your hair," physicist Holger Bech Nielsen explained.
There are also rumors and fears that the LHC will create a black hole, that will destroy the universe. Scientists call this idea science fiction, and say that the major hope of the LHC is to allow scientists to finally see the Higgs boson, or fundamental particle of the universe. Thus far it has been unseen, but physicists agree that it exists and that the LHC is the best opportunity to finally recreate it.
Physicists at the CERN say that two different types of experiments are planned currently for the LHC. ATLAS and CMS are the general-purpose experiments designed to find the Higgs boson and other rare particles that have never been detected before. And ALICE, another experiment, will explore the matter that existed some 10 microseconds after the Big Bang. Both experiments have the potential to revolutionize modern physics.
