Hadron Collider: launch. The Large Hadron Collider is what is needed and where is it located?

The history of the creation of the accelerator, which we know today as a large hadron collider, begins as early as 2007. Initially, the chronology of accelerators began with a cyclotron. The device was a small device that fit easily on the table. Then the history of accelerators began to develop rapidly. Synchrophasotron and synchrotron appeared.

In history, perhaps the most entertaining was the period from 1956 to 1957. In those days, Soviet science, in particular physics, did not lag behind foreign brothers. Using the experience gained over the years, a Soviet physicist named Vladimir Veksler made a breakthrough in science. They created the most powerful for those times synchrophasotron. Its working power was 10 gigaelectronvolt (10 billion electron volts). After this discovery, already serious samples of accelerators were created: a large electron-positron collider, a Swiss accelerator, in Germany, the USA. All of them had one common goal - the study of fundamental quark particles.

The Large Hadron Collider was created primarily thanks to the efforts of the Italian physicist. His name is Carlo Rubbia, Nobel Prize winner. During his work, Rubbia worked as a director in the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It was decided to build and launch the hadron collider precisely at the site of the research center.

Where is the Hadron Collider?

The collider is located on the border between Switzerland and France. The length of its circumference is 27 kilometers, so it is called large. The accelerator ring extends in depth from 50 to 175 meters. The collider has 1232 magnets installed. They are superconducting, and hence from them it is possible to develop a maximum field for dispersal, since the energy expenditure in such magnets is practically absent. The total weight of each magnet is 3.5 tons at a length of 14.3 meters.

Like any physical object, a large hadronic collider generates heat. Therefore, it must be constantly cooled. For this, a temperature of 1.7 K is maintained with 12 million liters of liquid nitrogen. In addition, liquid helium (700,000 liters) is used for cooling, and most importantly, pressure is used that is ten times lower than the normal atmospheric pressure.

The temperature of 1.7 K on the Celsius scale is -271 degrees. This temperature is almost close to absolute zero. Absolute zero is the minimum possible limit that a physical body can have.

The inner part of the tunnel is no less interesting. There are niobium-titanium cables with superconducting capabilities. Their length is 7600 kilometers. The total weight of the cables is 1200 tons. The interior of the cable is a plexus of 6300 wires with a total distance of 1.5 billion kilometers. This length is 10 astronomical units. For example, the distance from the earth to the sun is equal to 10 such units.

If we talk about its geographical location, we can say that the collider rings lie between the cities of Saint-Genie and Forney-Voltaire, located on the French side, as well as Meirin and Vessurat - on the Swiss side. A small ring, called PS, runs along the border along the diameter.

The meaning of existence

In order to answer the question "what the hadron collider is for", one should turn to scientists. Many scientists say that this is the greatest invention during the entire period of the existence of science, and that without it the science that is known to us today simply does not make sense. The existence and launch of a large hadronic collider are interesting in that an explosion occurs in the collision of particles in the hadronic collider. All the smallest particles scatter in different directions. New particles are formed that can explain the existence and meaning of many things.

The first thing scientists tried to find in these broken particles is the theoretically predicted physicist Peter Higgs an elementary particle called the "Higgs Boson". This amazing particle is the carrier of information, as it is believed. It is also called the "particle of God". Opening it would bring scientists closer to understanding the universe. It should be noted that in 2012, on July 4, the hadronic collider (its launch was partially successful) helped to detect a similar particle. To date, scientists are trying to study it in more detail.

How long ...

Of course, the question immediately arises, and why scientists have been studying these particles for so long. If there is an instrument, then you can run it, and each time you shoot more and more data. The fact is that the work of the hadron collider is an expensive pleasure. One run costs a large amount. For example, the annual energy consumption is 800 million kW / h. This amount of energy is spent by the city, in which about 100 thousand people live, by average standards. And this is not counting the cost of maintenance. Another reason is that the hadron collider explosion, which occurs when the protons collide, is associated with obtaining a large amount of data: computers read so much information that processing takes a lot of time. Even though the power of computers that receive information is great even by today's standards.

The next reason is no less well-known dark matter. Scientists working with the collider in this direction are sure that the visible spectrum of the entire universe is only 4%. It is assumed that the rest are dark matter and dark energy. Experimentally they try to prove that this theory is correct.

Hadron Collider: for or against

The advanced theory of dark matter questioned the safety of the existence of the hadronic collider. There was a question: "Hadron Collider: for or against?" He excited many scientists. All the great minds of the world are divided into two categories. "Opponents" put forward an interesting theory that if such a matter exists, then it must have the opposite particle. And in the collision of particles in the accelerator, a dark part arises. There was a risk that the dark part and the part we see would collide. Then it could lead to the death of the whole universe. However, after the first launch of the hadronic collider, this theory was partially broken down.

Further on the importance there is an explosion of the universe, or rather, birth. It is believed that in a collision one can observe how the universe behaved in the first seconds of existence. The way she looked after the origin of the Big Bang. It is believed that the process of collision of particles is very similar to that which was at the very beginning of the origin of the universe.

Still no less fantastic idea, which scientists check - these are exotic models. This seems incredible, but there is a theory that suggests that there are other dimensions and universes with people like us. And strangely enough, the accelerator can also help here.

Simply put, the purpose of the existence of an accelerator is to understand what the universe is, how it was created, to prove or disprove all existing theories about particles and related phenomena. Of course, this will take years, but with each launch there are new discoveries that overturn the world of science.

Facts about the accelerator

Everyone knows that the accelerator accelerates particles to 99% of the speed of light, but not many know that the percentage is 99.9999991% of the speed of light. This stunning figure makes sense thanks to an ideal design and powerful acceleration magnets. Also it is necessary to note some less well-known facts.

The numbers obtained in the collision of particles and during acceleration

The number of protons in the bunch	Up to 100 billion (1011)
Number of bunches	Up to 2808
The number of proton beams passing through the detector area	Up to 31 million per second, in 4 zones
The number of collisions of particles at the intersection	Up to 20
The amount of data per collision	About 1.5 MB
Quantities of Higgs particles	1 particle every 2.5 seconds (at full beam intensity and according to certain assumptions about the properties of Higgs particles)

Approximately 100 million streams with data that come from each of the two main detectors can in a matter of seconds fill more than 100,000 CDs. In just one month, the number of disks would have reached such a height that if they were stacked, it would have been enough for the moon. Therefore, it was decided not to collect all the data that comes from the detectors, but only those that allow us to use the data collection system, which in fact acts as a filter for the data. It was decided to record only 100 events that occurred at the time of the explosion. These events will be recorded in the archives of the computer center of the system of the Large Hadron Collider, which is located in the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, which concurrently is the location of the accelerator. Not those events that have been recorded will be recorded, but those that are of greatest interest to the scientific community.

Post-processing

After recording, hundreds of kilobytes of data will be processed. To do this, more than two thousand computers are located, at CERN. The task of these computers is the processing of primary data and the formation of a database, which will be convenient for further analysis. Next, the generated data stream will be sent to the GRID network . This Internet network unites thousands of computers that are located in different institutions around the world, connects more than hundreds of large centers that are located on three continents. All such centers are connected to CERN using fiber - for the maximum data transfer rate.

Speaking about the facts, it is necessary to mention also the physical indicators of the structure. The accelerator tunnel is in a deviation of 1.4% of the horizontal plane. This is done primarily in order to place most of the accelerator tunnel in a monolithic rock. Thus, the depth of placement on opposite sides is different. If counted from the side of the lake, which is near Geneva, the depth will be 50 meters. The opposite part has a depth of 175 meters.

Interestingly, the lunar phases affect the accelerator. It would seem that such a distant object can act on such a distance. However, it is noticed that during the full moon, when there is a tide, the land in the Geneva area rises by as much as 25 centimeters. This affects the length of the collider. The length is thereby increased by 1 millimeter, and the beam energy changes by 0.02%. Since the beam energy control must pass up to 0.002%, researchers are obliged to take this phenomenon into account.

Also interesting is that the collider tunnel has the shape of an octagon, not a circle, as many imagine. Angles are formed due to short sections. They contain installed detectors, as well as a system that controls a beam of accelerating particles.

Structure

The Hadron Collider, the launch of which is associated with the use of many details and the excitement of scientists, is an amazing device. The entire accelerator consists of two rings. A small ring is called the Proton synchrotron or, if you use abbreviations - PS. A large ring is a proton supersynchrotron, or SPS. Together, the two rings allow the parts to be accelerated to 99.9% of the speed of light. In this case, the collider also increases the energy of the protons, increasing their total energy by 16 times. It also allows particles to collide with each other about 30 million times per second. Within 10 hours. From 4 main detectors, at most 100 terabytes of digital data per second is obtained. The acquisition of data is due to certain factors. For example, they can detect elementary particles that have a negative electrical charge, and also have a half spin. Since these particles are unstable, their direct detection is impossible, it is possible to detect only their energy, which will fly out at a certain angle to the beam axis. This stage is called the first launch level. Over this stage are monitored more than 100 special data processing boards, in which logic implementation schemes are built. This part of the work is characterized by the fact that more than 100,000 blocks with data per second are sampled during the data acquisition period. These data will then be used for analysis, which occurs using a mechanism of a higher level.

Systems of the next level, on the contrary, receive information from all detector streams. Detector software works on the network. There, it will use a large number of computers to process subsequent blocks of data, the average time between blocks is 10 microseconds. Programs will have to create particle markers, corresponding to the original points. As a result, we will get a set of data consisting of momentum, energy, trajectory and others, which occurred at one event.

Accelerator parts

The whole accelerator can be divided into 5 main parts:

1) Accelerator of the electron-positron collider. The detail represents about 7 thousand magnets with superconducting properties. With the help of them, the beam is directed along the ring tunnel. And they also focus the beam in one stream, the width of which will decrease to the width of one hair.

2) Compact muon solenoid. It is a detector intended for general use. In such a detector, new phenomena are searched for, and, for example, the search for Higgs particles.

3) Detector LHCb. The significance of this device lies in the search for quarks and antiquarks opposite to them.

4) Toroidal installation ATLAS. This detector is designed for fixing muons.

5) Alice. This detector captures collisions of lead ions and proton-proton collisions.

Problems in launching the hadronic collider

Despite the fact that the presence of high technology eliminates the possibility of errors, in practice everything is different. During the assembly of the accelerator, delays occurred, as well as failures. I must say that this was not unexpected. The device contains so many nuances and requires such precision that scientists expected such results. For example, one of the problems that scientists faced during the launch was the failure of the magnet, which focused the beams of protons just before their collision. This serious accident was caused by the destruction of part of the fastening due to the loss of superconductivity by the magnet.

This problem arose in 2007. Because of her launch of the collider was postponed several times, and only in June the launch took place, after almost a year the collider still started.

The last launch of the collider was successful, many terabytes of data were collected.

The Hadron Collider, launched on April 5, 2015, is functioning successfully. Within a month, the beams will drive along the ring, gradually increasing the power. There are no goals for research as such. The collision energy of the beams will be increased. The value will be raised from 7 TeV to 13 TeV. Such an increase will allow us to see new possibilities in the collision of particles.

In 2013 and 2014 years. Passed serious technical inspections of tunnels, accelerators, detectors and other equipment. As a result, there were 18 bipolar magnets with a superconducting function. It should be noted that the total number of them is 1232 pieces. However, the remaining magnets were not ignored. In the rest, cooling protection systems were replaced, and improved ones were installed. The cooling system of the magnets has also been improved. This allows them to stay at low temperatures with maximum power.

If everything goes well, the next launch of the accelerator will take place only in three years. Through this period planned work is planned to improve the technical inspection of the collider.

It should be noted that repairs cost a penny, not including the cost. The Hadron Collider, as of 2010, has a price equal to 7.5 billion euros. This figure brings the whole project to the first place in the list of the most expensive projects in the history of science.

Last news

The Hadron Collider, which was launched after the break, was successful. Interesting data were collected. For example, evidence was presented that the modern concept of particles is correct. This became possible due to the correct operation of the CMS and LHCb detectors. These detectors caught the BS decay into two mesons, which is a direct proof of the validity of modern theories.

It is worth asking the question how the proof of such a theory takes place. One way is to capture new particles. That is, if new elementary particles appear in a collision, it means that the modern theory needs to be reconsidered.

The attention of scientists is focused on this particle only because it can prove, well, or at least open the door in the direction of supersymmetry. This is a good start for further study and work in the center of scientific research in Geneva.

What's next?

After the next modernization of the collider takes place, problems will be posed for further study of the particles. In particular, it will be necessary to learn more about the Higgs bosons. Despite the fact that the Nobel Prize was awarded for this discovery, not all of its properties have been thoroughly studied and proven. Therefore, scientists have a long and difficult work to study this amazing particle.

In addition, it is necessary to continue work on the proof or refutation of the theory of supersymmetry. Although it seems somewhat fantastic, it has the right to exist. Do not think that all attention is paid only to the problem of first importance, for each project there is a team of scientists who work in this field.

Of course, these are not all tasks that must be solved by scientists. With each new terabyte of information received, the list of questions is continuously supplemented, and the answers to them can be searched for over the years.