What the Large Hadron Collider is expected to find

photo credit: solarnu

The Large Hadron Collider is a scientific experiment that been in the
making since 1983. Buried under the border between Switzerland and
France is a 17 mile long circular tunnel, filled with super conducting
magnets that are designed to accelerate a beam of protons around the
circle at close to the speed of light.
The purpose of this facility, known by its abbreviations as the LHC,
is to generate two of these beams of protons travelling around the
tunnel in opposite directions. Once the beams have accellerated to
99.9999991% the speed of light, they go around the 17 mile long ring
11,000 times per second.

At this point, the beams are moved into each other, so that the
protons smash into one another with such great force that the protons
break apart. Using large detectors and a super computer facility, the
physicists working at the LHC will be able to gather and process data,
in order to determine what particles make up everything in the
universe.

Proton accelerators are not uncommon in particle physics. However, the
size and power of the LHC make it unique. The detectors in the
facility are the largest ever made, and the hope is that physiscsts
will be able to know more about what the basic building blocks of our
universe are. So far, many of these elementary particles have been
found. Many physicists believe that the LHC will help find a particle
known as the higgs-boson that has long been speculated about, but
never detected.

The higgs particle is expected to exist because of a mathematical
formula known as the standard model. The standard model is used in
particle physics to describe the universe, from small atoms to massive
galaxies. But, the model only works because scientists assume that
this extra particle exists. Taking the particle out of the formula
means that the results become much less reliable.
Physicists believe that the higgs-boson particle is responsible for
giving mass to fundamental particles. By using the detectors at the
LHC, they hope to obtain physical evidence for the existence of the
particle. Some particles attract a lot of higgs particles, and become
very massive—such as W and Z bosons. And other particles don't attract
the higgs particles at all—such as light photons.
However, the LHC is also expected to increase knowledge of dark matter
and super symmetry. But due to mechanical problems during the first
set of tests, the LHC has been shut down until mid to late 2009.