The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons charged with approximately 7 TeVs of energy. Its main purpose is to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model, the current theoretical picture for particle physics. It is theorized the collider will produce the elusive Higgs boson, the observation of which could confirm the predictions and missing links in the Standard Model of physics and could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.
wo beams of subatomic particles called ‘hadrons’ – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.
The data from the experiment will be used to solve the mysteries surrounding concepts such as “dark matter,” “dark energy,” and, most importantly, “Higgs Boson.” The latter, known as the “God Particle,” is the only particle that the Standard Model didn’t observe, although it has predicted it. The “Higgs boson” could explain how massless particles manage to construct mass in matter.
CERN and Fernilab have made huge efforts to observe the particle experimentally, but to no avail so far. The hope now lies with the LHC. Nevertheless, it will take baby-steps towards the re-enactment of the “Big Bang.” First, technicians will pump a beam in one direction only. If this goes smoothly, the beam will be pushed in the other direction and afterwards, beams will be projected both ways, thus smashing protons into each other. Tiny collisions recreating the “Big Bang” will be produced later this year.
