The world's largest particle collider successfully completed its first major test by firing a beam of protons around a 17-mile underground ring Sept. 10 in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen indicating that the protons had traveled the full length of the Large Hadron Collider.
The collider is constructed deep underground beneath the border between Switzerland and France.
Considered to be the world’s largest machine, it was built at a cost of $9 billion dollars to make truly groundbreaking discoveries in science.
The collider took ten years to build.
Inside the collider, powerful magnets chilled to a few degrees above absolute zero (-271C) zip beams of energetic protons in a loop at speeds close to the speed of light then collide them head on.
The energy released is so huge that the impacts will eventually recreate conditions in the universe as they existed just a tiny fraction of a second after the “Big Bang,” the so-called instant of the universe’s creation.
The first high-energy collisions are planned to take place beginning in October.
If the collider performs as expected, it will most likely reveal a previously unseen particle known as the Higgs boson. Other phenomena may also be created and observed for the first time, including microscopic black holes.
Some have theorized that this side of the project could go wrong with Earth-threatening results, a fear that the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the group that oversees the collider’s experiments, has comprehensively denied.
When running at full power the collider will use $100,000 worth of electricity every day.
It’s the world’s largest refrigerator. The 1,232 superconducing dipole magnets, which allow the collider to function, operate at -456 degrees Fahrenheit.
Some 2,000 scientists from 155 institutes and universities in 36 countries have collaborated to build and operate the collider.
It is expected to be the most powerful tool yet for physicists who seek to uncover the secrets behind the laws of the universe, both on the sub-microscopic scale of quantum physics and in the huge domain of galaxies and black holes.
Critics who say the world’s largest atom-smasher could destroy the world have brought their claims to courtrooms in Europe and the United States, and although the claims are getting further consideration, neither court would hold up the official startup.
Legal action is pending at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. The court agreed to review doomsday claims from a group of professors and students, primarily from Germany and Austria. However, the court rejected a call for the immediate halt of collider operations.
Hopes are highest for the discovery of the Higgs boson, nicknamed “the God particle.”
It’s so called because it’s a key part of the standard model of particle physics, which explains how matter interacts with three of the four fundamental forces of nature — electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force that binds the parts of an atom’s nucleus together, and the weak nuclear force that allows for the radioactive decay of particles.
This model posits two kinds of elementary particles: bosons, which mediate these forces, and fermions, which combine to make up matter.
The Higgs boson, which is supposed to impart mass to other particles, so far has eluded researchers but because the standard model has stood up to repeated experimentation, it is assumed the Higgs is likely to be found at the energy levels the collider will be working.
Since this is exploratory science, the collider may uncover surprises that contradict prevailing theories, said Joseph Lykken, theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
“When Columbus sailed west, he thought he was going to find something. He didn’t find what he thought he would, but he did discover something interesting,” said Lykken, who works on the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of six experiments inside the collider complex.
Potential breakthroughs include identification of the mysterious dark matter that makes up 90 percent of the mass in the universe. More exotic possibilities include evidence for completely new forces of nature or hidden extra dimensions of space and time.
“The collider is a discovery machine. We don’t know what we’ll find,” said Abraham Seiden, professor of physics and director of the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dominican Sr. Katarina Pajchel, a physicist from the University of Oslo in Norway, who works with CERN on collider projects, told NCR: “Today’s picture of fundamental particles and processes has become part of our common understanding of nature. The theories have so far been remarkably successful; however there are some key questions that remain open.”
The collider is designed to cover the energy range where we would expect new discoveries that answer these questions, she said. “We hope perhaps also to answer other questions: Are there, for example, more than three space dimensions? Can we understand better the small asymmetry between matter and anti-matter, which is the very reason that we and everything around us exists?
“It might sound like a science fiction scenario but it is not.”
The laws of nature speak of an amazing order, creativity and beauty, she said. “Our current understanding bears witness to the power of human thought, imagination and curiosity. Through it we are given insight into God’s creative plan.”
However deep these discoveries go, Pajchel said, they do not threaten religion, “but rather firmly hold up the real mysteries of faith, more clearly and in a challenging way.
“Contact with sober science can make us less vulnerable and more balanced as well in meeting modern religious movements, like New Age, which are often quasi-scientific,” she said. “One can end up in the paradoxical situation of defending both rational scientific research and the real mysteries of faith.”
Finally, are these experiments dangerous?
Wrote Pajchel, in a response: They are "not dangerous."
"We are excited about how high energies we are reaching at LHC, but nature provides us with particles with energies far beyond what we can create in an experiment. The earth is constantly bombarded by so-called cosmic radiation, particles sent out from spectacular reactions in the universe.
"Some very few of these cosmic particles have a very, very high energy, or in other words, very high speed, and as they hit the atmosphere of the earth they create collisions of the same type as we are going to study at the LHC. These have definitely enough energy to create mini black holes if it their theories are right. The very fact that we still exist is the best evidence that if such are created, they are not dangerous."
Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. His e-mail address is rheffern@ncronline.org.
