What exactly does the Large Hadron Collider do?

Question

what is it/ what does it do?

Answer 1

It collides large hadrons.

Answer 2

it's a particle accelerator. it accelerates protons to extremely high speed and smashes them in to each other.

bcuz the very high speed particles have lots of energy (e=mc^2), they create new particles out of energy when the collide. physicists want to see what kinds of particles they can make to figure out how our universe works.

Answer 3

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.

Answer 4

It provides hilarity on XKCD.

Answer 5

It collides two streams of protons, traveling in opposite directions at nearly the speed of light, and then detects and records the results of those collisions.

Answer 6

its a large ring something like 17 miles in circumference (dont quote me on that). it takes 2 beams of protons and fires them in opposite directions in the ring. the 2 beams have massive energy and are moving at 99.9999% the speed of light. when the two beam hit some protons collide. when the two highly energetic protons collide they can create new particles.

scientists are hoping that the energy is high enough to create some new particles that they have been searching for, like the higgs boson. they are also hoping they might find particles predicted by string theory, or supersymmetry theories.

another possibility is verifying a grand unified theory (GUT). a GUT attempts to unify 3 of the 4 forces, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force unify at high energies to create the electroweak force, we already know this. the LHC could possibly create energies high enough to merge the strong nuclear force with the electroweak force to create the electronuclear force. this would mean 3 of the 4 forces are different manifestations of the same force and were unified at the beginning of the universe (which would support the big bang theory).

Answer 7

It's part of a conspiracy to destroy the world by creating quantum black holes and feeding them protons and stuff, as kindling so to speak, until they are stable enough to release into Earth and suck the planet up. And us too.

Answer 8

IT SMASHES ATOMS TO PIECES! It's a very big particle accelerator.