Published on Sep 1, 2015In September, Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will smash together sub-atomic particles at nearly the speed of light, an unprecedented experiment that has some of the leading voices in the world of science - and religion - sounding the alarm on the risks involved.
CERN is perhaps most famous for its discovery in 2012 of the elusive Higgs Boson [named after British physicist Peter Higgs who predicted its existence in 1964], the so-called ‘God particle,’ which allows other particles to build up mass as they pass through the Higgs field.
Today, however, CERN is more famous – or perhaps infamous is the better word - for an upcoming experiment in which scientists will play God in an effort to recreate the conditions immediately following the ‘Big Bang’ event that gave birth to the Universe millions of years ago.
For those who are in the dark about CERN and the controversial objectives it hopes to achieve, here is a quick primer.
CERN is the world’s biggest machine
Straddling the French-Swiss border, the $9 billion CERN collider complex is buried at a depth of up to 575 feet (175 meters). The tunnel complex runs along a 17-mile (27-kilometer) circuit. Scientists involved in the project say the laboratory was built underground because the Earth’s crust provides protection against radiation. They also say it was buried out of respect for the natural landscape, which sounds slightly ironic considering the massive damage the collider could possibly cause down the road.
Massive gravitational pull
The CERN collider is composed of some 9,600 super magnets – which are 100,000 times more powerful than the gravitational pull of Earth - that fire protons around a circular track at mindboggling speeds. A beam might rotate for up to 10 hours, travelling a distance of more than 10 billion kilometers, enough to make it to the far reaches of our Solar System and back again. Travelling just below light-speed, a proton in the LHC will make 11,245 circuits every second.
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