The Large Hadron Collider is a powerful particle accelerator funded by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is located in an underground tunnel and is capable of colliding particles at high energies to study fundamental physics questions. The collider incorporates six detectors to discover new particles and confirm current theories. There are concerns about the creation of a particle that could destroy Earth, but this is debated among particle physics theories.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a high-energy particle accelerator. The accelerator is funded by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world’s largest particle physics organization, and passes through both France and Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator and is capable of colliding protons at energies up to fourteen trillion electron volts, as well as heavier particles, such as iron nuclei. It is hoped that the experiments conducted at the Large Hadron Collider will help solve fundamental physics questions, such as the nature of mass and the existence of extra dimensions.
The Large Hadron Collider is located in an underground circular tunnel with a circumference of about 10.5 miles (17 km), once used to house a former particle accelerator. The particles are injected into the tunnel at high speed in opposite directions, and then accelerated by powerful magnetic fields. Keeping the particles in a beam, as they circulate around the tunnel at near the speed of light, is quite difficult; large superconducting magnets are needed to provide the necessary force. When two particles collide, the kinetic energy of the particles goes into creating a panoply of exotic and short-lived collision products.
The Large Hadron Collider incorporates six different detectors, with the aim of discovering what these new particles are and how they behave. Many particle physics theories predict that the Large Hadron Collider will be powerful enough to create new particles, such as the Higgs boson, or supersymmetric partners of common particles. If these particles are detected, they will confirm our current theories about the structure of the universe; unexpected particles may also appear, which are not part of any current theory.
There are fears that the Large Hadron Collider could create a particle, such as a stable Strangelet, that could cause a chain reaction in ordinary matter and end up destroying Earth. There is no single unified theory of particle physics, and some theories suggest that this might be possible, while others rule it out altogether. Earth has long been exposed to cosmic ray radiation, which has far more energy per particle than anything produced by the Large Hadron Collider; however, these rays may have different properties than the protons used in physics experiments.
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