Masters of the beam
THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (LHC), known to its mates and crazies around the world as ‘the planet eater’, was powered up today in its entirety, bringing the boffins at CERN one step closer to proving or disproving the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson.
The event started off with a spokesboffin thanking the staff at CERN and all the collaborators around the world for their hard work in making today possible.
The official launch kicked off at 9:15 CET (8:15 UK time) – an obscenely early time for a hack, especially one that was also covering the Apple launch last night. Despite our excitement about the whole event the launch was rather anti-climatic, but significant nonetheless.
The launch was done in stages, sending the beam of protons around each octant of the 27km ring and checking the result before removing the blockers and testing the next segment. This was done to give scientists the chance to calibrate the beam’s orbit if necessary and check the results from each of the detectors.
The entire process went much smoother and quicker than predicted. It was thought it could take most of the day to get things running smoothly, but in fact within an hour all eight sectors had been tested and it was time to send the beam around the whole ring in a single shot.
The audience waited with bated breath for the next pulse to come and applause broke out when the detectors at the beginning and the end both flashed, indicating that the beam successfully made it around the ring. The test of the counter clockwise beam went just as well.
As one presenter at the event quipped at the success of the test: “They have become masters of the beam.”
The next stage will be to actually start smashing the particles together. There are no firm dates in place yet, but low-energy collisions are due to begin in a few weeks and the LHC is expected to be in full swing, performing high-energy collisions before the end of the year.
The LHC is actually home to four separate detectors, each with a different purpose. The best known is ATLAS, the largest of the four which is attempting to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson, a particle that could help prove or completely tear down some of the current theories about how our universe operates.
The others are known as CMS, LHCb and ALICE and will help researchers probe the questions around super-symmetry, matter and anti-matter and extra dimensions, amongst others. These and the raft of other experiments made possible by the LHC, are expected to help drive our understanding of the universe and the development of a whole host of new technologies for decades to come.
“Whether we discover what we expect or have our theories completely overturned, the physics textbooks will never be the same again,” said Professor Keith Mason, the CEO of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), a UK organisation heavily involved in the project.
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has doubts about the existence of the Higgs Boson and has bet $100 that CERN won’t find the God Particle, as it is known in some quarters.
Related article: ‘Big Bang’ experiment starts well
