The Large Hadron Collider 

Elí S. Sánchez Virella

      The Large Hadron Collider, also known as the LHC, was completed on September 10, 2008. Its location is on the border of France and Switzerland or more specifically, the edge of Geneva, Switzerland. With over one-thousand five-hundred superconducting electromagnets guiding particle beams in a large circle at about 99.999991% the speed of light over the distance of twenty-seven kilometers, the LHC is the by far largest particle accelerator known man and the most powerful. It was activated for the first time on the 19th of the month, firing its first beams and smashing its first particles. Due to fault in one of the magnets though, further projects have been postponed and will return again in spring of 2009. Because of this, and prior to this, people have feared its activation saying that it could bestow doomsday situations or nuclear destruction upon us. Some have even brought into theory the threat of the Earth’s destruction by the universe’s ultimate maelstrom, the black hole.

      The LHC will be used for various purposes. It will lead the scientists to answer their doubts of how the universe works. It will demonstrate the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson, which have stood unobserved. Also it will help to demonstrate if electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force are just different manifestations of a single unified force. Currently is unknown the reason why the gravitational force is a lot weaker than the other three fundamental forces; this LHC will also answer that mystery. The dark matter and dark energy which tries to explain the expansion of the universe will be studied and wil lead scientist to know how they behave. The LHC will answer these mysteries and more when it starts in full functioning.

      This LHC is contained in a circular tunnel with a circumference of 27 km and is at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 m under the surface. It has a 3.8 m wide concrete tunnel used to house another masterpiece of the science, the Large Electro-Positron Collider. It takes less than 90 microseconds to give one revolution to the main ring; that’s about 11,000 rev/sec. This project has an expected cost of US$8.7 billion. Most of the money has been spent on various accidents and delays due to faulty parts and engineering difficulties.

      Like its said before, people is afraid that the LHC will lead us to doomsday because it involves the production of microscopic black holes or the creation of particles called strangelets. Experts at the LHC have made the pertinent studies and they concluded that the LHC is completely safe and propones no danger to anyone. Personally I don’t think this will cause a catastrophe because what the hundreds of scientist and engineers are doing is enriching humanity, not in the least way putting it at risk. First off, protons hold a small amount of mass, but from the bomb droppings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we’ve learned that a small amount of mass can be converted into a massive amount of energy. When a particle smashes into another, the chances of them splitting is a million to one. It occurs naturally in the cosmos, but to no ill effect or something visible in the sky. Even if it were to happen, nothing negative could come of it because it’s so far underground. Therefore, one shouldn’t say that could happen.