Large Hadron Collider Big Science for the 21 st Century David Lantz

Basics Circular tunnel with 27km circumference buried m underground Outside Geneva on the Swiss-French border Operated by European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) World's largest particle accelerator

Purpose Answer fundamental questions of physics  Look into the moments after Big Bang  Dark Matter  Higgs Boson  Supersymmetry Showcase international scientific cooperation

What does it really do? The ring is actually two tracks which intersect Scientists fire protons down each track, making them slam into each other at extremely high speeds Acquire data from collisions, which produce high energy similar to after Big Bang

Why is it worth it? Physicists have hit the wall LHC has the potential to further our understanding of the universe in unprecedented ways Not practical application of science, but practical applications of technologies used

Concerns $9 billion project without practical application of findings Doomsday prophecies

Triumphs Most expensive science project ever Produces 15 petabytes of data per year(1 petabyte = 1 million gigabytes) It works! Protons sent through rings in Sep 2008, first collisions on Nov 23, 2009 Project involved cooperation between 111 nations

Where to go from here Might take up to 3 years to discover Higgs Boson(hypothetical particle) Talks about upgrading the LHC as well as building even larger particle collider already happening

Resources Large Hadron Collider Machine Outreach - outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/ outreach.web.cern.ch/lhc-machine-outreach/ CERN - LHC UK - Wikipedia - CBC News - physics-large-hadron-collision.html