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Particle accelerators, colloquially known as “atom smashers,” accelerate particles to significant fractions of the speed of light to probe their internal structure. They are key tools used by physicists to explore the “inner space” of the atom. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most expensive and largest technological construct ever built, located in a tunnel 27 km in circumference under the French-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. Physicists use the LHC to answer questions about the fundamental structure of matter, including the behavior of antimatter and the characteristics of forces within atoms. The LHC can also recreate the conditions in which the universe existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, shedding light on difficult questions about dark matter and dark energy.
“Atom smasher” is a colloquial term for a particle accelerator, a device that accelerates elementary particles (protons, electrons, and each other to significant fractions of the speed of light to probe their internal structure. Physicists build accelerators of particles since 1931, when a 9″ cyclotron atom destroyer was built at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.. Particle accelerators are key tools used by physicists to probe the structure of space, time, and matter Instead of exploring outer space like telescopes, particle accelerators explore the “inner space” of the atom.
The latest and greatest atom destroyer is the US$5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under the French-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. This device, which is one of the most expensive and largest technological constructs ever built, is located in a tunnel 27 km (17 mi) in circumference, up to 175 m (570 ft) deep. It accelerates particles to 99.9999991% of the speed of light, smashing them together with many billion times more energy than typical particles in the air or earth that collide with each other due to thermal excitation. The collision energy in a particle accelerator is given in electron volts, which indicates how many electron equivalents the collision energy is.
Atom destroyers have historically been built to answer questions like “What is the behavior of antimatter?” “What smallest particles make up the atom?” “What are the precise characteristics of the forces between and within these atoms?” and “What fundamental particles exist?” Using an atom crusher, physicists have learned enormous amounts about the fundamental structure of matter, which can find applications in numerous fields of technology, including our understanding of nuclear energy and how to make highly efficient solar cells.
The most modern destroyer of atoms, the LHC, was built to answer questions such as: “How do particles get their mass?”, “Electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces are different manifestations of the same force underlying?”, “Why is gravity so weak compared to other fundamental forces of nature?”, “Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter?” and “What is dark matter and dark energy?” These questions perplex many physicists and are at the forefront of the field. Only with these huge particle accelerators can physicists recreate the conditions in which the universe existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, shedding light on these difficult questions.
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