What does the LHC do?

Question

I'm sure most of you have heard of the Large Hadron Collider. I've read it over and over again, "it's the world's largest particle accelerator". My question is, what on earth does that mean? My friend and I would like to know (we're only freshman :P). Really...what does this thing DO?!

Answer 1

It generates two beams of protons, accelerates them in opposite directions to nearly the speed of light, then collides the two beams and observes the results of the collision. From this, a great deal can be discerned about the internal structure of matter, and the energy within it, and that tells a lot about how the universe actually works.

Edit - here's another explanation of what it does:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j50ZssEojt...

Answer 2

The LHC will allow scientists to probe deeper into the heart of matter and further back in time than has been possible using previous colliders.

Researchers think that the Universe originated in the Big Bang (an unimaginably violent explosion) and since then the Universe has been cooling down and becoming less energetic. Very early in the cooling process the matter and forces that make up our world ‘condensed’ out of this ball of energy.

The LHC will produce tiny patches of very high energy by colliding together atomic particles that are travelling at very high speed. The more energy produced in the collisions the further back we can look towards the very high energies that existed early in the evolution of the Universe. Collisions in the LHC will have up to 7x the energy of those produced in previous machines; recreating energies and conditions that existed billionths of a second after the start of the Big Bang.

The results from the LHC are not completely predictable as the experiments are testing ideas that are at the frontiers of our knowledge and understanding. Researchers expect to confirm predictions made on the basis of what we know from previous experiments and theories. However, part of the excitement of the LHC project is that it may uncover new facts about matter and the origins of the Universe.

One of the most interesting theories the LHC will test was put forward by the UK physicist Professor Peter Higgs and others. The different types of fundamental particle that make up matter have very different masses, while the particles that make up light (photons) have no mass at all. Peter’s theory is one explanation of why this is so and the LHC will allow us to test the theory.

Answer 3

Wiki has a pretty good introduction and there are may other sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadro...

Answer 4

It is a dooms day device to create a mini-blackhole and bring devastation to our planet. Clearer heads are trying to stop it:

http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2...

Do you think it is a co-incidence that they want to kick it off right before the 7 year anniversary of 9/11/01 and definitely before 2012?