• Question: How is the large hadron collider helping your understanding of the universe? Morgan, 12 ☺☻

    Asked by breem001 to Ben, Jony, Katharine, Mark, Peter on 15 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Ben Still

      Ben Still answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      As a particle physicist we view the history of the Universe not in time but energy. At the big bang there was an unimaginable amount of energy that exploded into existence and from that moment the Universe has been expanding and cooling (becoming less energetic) as the Universe gets older.

      At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),particles (protons) are being accelerated to energies equivalent to that in the very first second after the Big Bang. In this way the LHC is a time machine, taking us back to that very first second, letting us view weird and wonderful particles and interactions that have not been seen since the dawn of time.

    • Photo: Mark Basham

      Mark Basham answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Hi breem001,

      For me the LHC is helping me with lots of things that I need to use day to day, not just interesting information about the universe.

      Ok, this is a bit odd so let me give you an example, The LHC can generate 2 Gigabytes of data a second (that would fill a DVD in 2 Seconds!) This is loads of data, and they have a lot of clever people thinking about how to best deal with all this data. At diamond we only collect 0.5 Gigabytes of data per second, but we can make use of a lot of the hardware and tests that the LHC has done to make sure we get the best stuff for what we need.

      So not only is the science that they are doing fantastic as Ben said above, but the technologies it develops on the way are of loads of use for almost everybody who uses high end technologies.

      Thanks for the great question

      Mark

    • Photo: Katharine Schofield

      Katharine Schofield answered on 15 Nov 2011:

      Like Ben said, the LHC is going to accelerate particles to such high energies it’s going to let us study things we’ve just never been able to before. So far there haven’t been many results out of the LHC – nothing really conclusive anyway. It will take a bit of time for the physicists on the LHC to understand all the masses of data so the results won’t come out straight away. I think they will be worth waiting for though!

      Mark made a really good point about how useful the technology developed at the LHC is. It has benefits for a whole host of things, not just to other researchers. For example, the detectors developed at CERN for detecting particles are now being used in hospitals to improve the diagnosis and treatment of different diseases like cancer and heart disease. They help doctors take better images of the problem so that they can figure out the best way to treat it. So if it wasn’t cool enough to be figuring out how the universe works, you get loads of useful, practical stuff out of it too. Everyone’s a winner 🙂

Comments