FACTS AND MYTHS ABOUT

LARG```E HADRON COLLIDER

Outline
• LHC Overview
• Cosmic Rays
• LHC
▫ Design
▫ Detectors
▫ Goals
▫ Test Run
• Goals
• Test Run
• Applications of Astrophysics
 LHC Overview
• Built by the European
Organization for
Nuclear Research
(CERN)
• 10,000 scientists
collaborated
• Cost ~ $8 billion
• Generates 1 GBps of
data
What it is not
• A weapon
• Earth’s Doomsday
• blackhole/wormhole
creator
Myths
• Recently Walter L. Wagner
and Luis Sancho sued CERN
over the use of the LHC
claiming it would destroy
the planet
▫ Did the same thing for
FERMILAB
• The case was thrown out
Cosmic Rays
• Cosmic rays are
continually hitting the
atmosphere
 high energy extragalactic
particles
▫ Have energies
similar/greater than the
LHC can achieve
Nothing bad has happened
yet
The Earth is still here
• LHCf experiment
So what is it?
• The LHC is the most powerful particle collider
ever built
▫ Took 14 years of planning/construction
• It will collide two proton beams at 14 TeV (7 TeV
each beam)
▫ Also can collider lead ions (2.74 TeV)
Where is it?
• Located 100m underground
• Is in Switzerland and France
• Located in the old LEP
collider tunnel
▫ Reused existing tunnel with
a few modifications
▫ 3.7m in width, 27km in
circumference
Design
• 1,232 dipole magnets, 392 quadrupole magnets
▫ Maintains circular path and focuses the beam
respectively
▫ Weigh about 27 tons each
▫ Twin bore design used to reduce space
 Also magnetically couples the two beams
• 700,000 liters of liquid helium are used for
cooling (1.9K)
• Base energy is 450 GeV and a couple times a day
they are accelerated to 7 TeV
Detectors
• Could see up to
600 million
collisions per
second
• 3 different
detectors for
different types
of collisions
▫ LHCf
Goals of The LHC
• Understand the early universe better
▫ Ion collider will be particularly useful for this
• Find experiments to test the validity of Grand
Unified Theories, and possibly string theory
• Detect the predicted Higgs Boson
▫ Expected to exist at energies this machine can
reach
Test Run
• The LHC started up on September 10th at 4:27am
sending a stream of protons around at 451 GeV
• There were no collisions – only one beam
circulated
• On September 19th the LHC was shutdown for
repairs
• Is expected to resume operations in spring 2009
Problems with Test Run
• After 2 days of operation a transformer for the
liquid helium failed and part of the tunnel
warmed up
▫ Wasn’t reported for a week
▫ Took a week to cool that section back from 4.4 K
to 2.1 K
Problems (cont.)
• A faulty electrical
connection between two
magnets caused a helium
leak
▫ Caused the collider to be
taken offline for the
remainder of the year
• 24 quadrupole and 8
dipole magnets were
damaged
Applications to Astronomy
• Clearly the LHC is not a telescope
• It does not make observations of the cosmos
• It does allow us to experiment with incredibly
high energies, energies seen only in the first few
seconds following the big bang
• Allows us to check validity of theories
▫ We use these theories to model the evolution of
the universe
▫ Also helps us describe high energy astrophysics
Thank You :)