Large Hadron Collider
There have been people screaming that the Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole. These same nay-sayers claim that a Large Hadron Collider black hole would grow unchecked until it was able to force the planet to disintegrate just before it was swallowed by the black hole that wayward scientists had created.
The same fears were voiced when the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider first fired, yet there has been no such incident to date. Most of the opposition to the LHC has been centered around an ignorance of the science behind the collider and a lack of understanding in relation to the safety mechanisms built into the system.
On March 30, 2010 the LHC fired twin bursts of 3.5 TeV in opposite directions. After each completed its half of the 27 km tunnel, the beams collided to create a 7 TeV collision of energy. No black holes were created, but thousands of pages of data spewed from the computers depicting what happened in a billionth of a second. It may take scientists a decade to evaluate all of the data and publish the findings.
The LHC was built to in hopes that it would answer many questions about the beginnings of our universe. Some of these questions include: Does the Higgs mechanism for generating elementary particle masses by electroweak symmetry breaking happen in nature, do Higgs boson exist, do other dimensions exist as predicted by String theory and can we detect them, and does dark matter exist and what is its nature are among the most popular lines of study associated with the collider.
Scientists believe that(assuming that the Standard Model is correct) a single Higgs boson may be produced every few hours. Based on that rate of production, it could take as many as three years to collect enough data to discover the Higgs boson unequivocally. The first proton–proton collisions at high energies have been published. They show a greater-than-predicted production of charged hadrons. The paper based on the readings from the Compact Muon Soleniod indicates that the increase in the number of charged hadrons exceeds the predictions of the theoretical models. The increase is 10-14% higher than expected. The charged hadrons were primarily mesons.
The Large Hadron Collider black hole has failed to rear its ugly head and hopefully that has put all of the conspiracy theories to bed. The LHC is planning to produce an even larger collision. As soon as preparations are complete, two 7TeV beams will meet to create a 14 TeV collision, the largest burst of energy ever produced by man.
We have written many articles about the Large Hadron Collider for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the Large Hadron Collider, and here’s an article about the particles injected into the Large Hadron Collider.
If you’d like more info on the Large Hadron Collider, check out the Lage Hadron Collider Homepage, and here’s a link to the CERN Website: Large Hadron Collider.
We’ve also recorded an entire episode of Astronomy Cast all about the Large Hadron Collider. Listen here, Episode 69: The Large Hadron Collider and The Search for the Higgs Boson.
Source: CERN
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