11 - Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record

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Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record
A. Madrigal, "Large Hadron Collider Triples Its Own Record" Wired Science, wired.com/wiredscience, March 19, 2010. [Online]. Available: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/lhc-triples-its-own-record/. [Accessed: March 20, 2010].

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located near the Franco-Swiss border, is the largest particle-accelerator ever built by mankind. With a diameter of about 17 miles, the accelerator runs 574 feet beneath the surface of the Earth, with most of the ring lying on the French side of the border but some of it lying on the Swiss side. The LHC was built for the purpose of accelerating subatomic particles to near-light speeds, crashing them together, and observing what results from the collision. One major goal is to discover the Higgs-Boson particle, which has been affectionately and popularly described as the God particle due to its alleged ability to explain the nature and origins of matter.

On March 19, the LHC charged particles to 3.48 trillion electron-volts (eV), which is three times the energy of any beams ever achieved by humans. This figure is only half of what the LHC is proposed to be capable of. This achievement is welcome news to the some 10,000 scientists and engineers who spent years designing and building the collider, especially after the LHC broke down in September 2008.

When the LHC is able to generate a beam with a magnitude of 7 eV, the incredible explosion that will result could either confirm or challenge those theories that, at present, physicists regard as immutable. What's more is that the collision could finally give rise to a 'Theory of Everything,' or a single, unifying theory that relates the most basic forces: gravity, electromagnetism, friction, and nuclear forces.