Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator. It pushes protons or ions to near the speed of light with the help of a ring of superconducting magnets with various accelerating structures. This ring has a circumference of 27 kilometers. It is the largest and one of the most complex machine ever made.

It is located in a tunnel 100 meters underground at CERN on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland. The main purpose of the Large Hadron Collider is to study the smallest known building blocks of matter.

Quick Facts: –

• More than 100 countries worked together to built this and the total cost of the project was 10.4 billion Swiss francs.
• The Large Hadron Collider consists of 9,300 magnets which are pre-cooled to -193.2 degree Celsius. About 10,080 tonnes of liquid nitrogen has been used in the process.
• It is also the reason why this machine also counts as the world’s largest fridge.
• There is an ultra high vacuum inside the accelerator so that the protons avoid collisions with gas molecules.
• Approximately 600 million collisions take place inside the accelerator every second.
• The temperature generated by these collisions is more than 100,000 times hotter than the heart of the Sun.
• There are three main parts in this machine. They are the particle accelerator, the four detectors, and the Grid.
• It was first used on September 10, 2008, but it did not work because a broken cooling system.
• Inside the LHC, two particle beams travel in opposite direction in separate beam pipes.
• CERN is the world’s largest laboratory dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental science.