• +
• -
• Text size

Related content

Topic tags

CERN, Physics, science, Features

Follow the mail on Twitter.

Getting around the Large Hadron Collider 100 metres underground at the CERN facility

SWITZERLAND is famous for many things: triangular chocolate, holey cheese and discreet banks.

But what you might not know, however, is that it also houses both the hottest and coldest places in the galaxy, a camera that takes 40 million pictures a second and the fastest racetrack on the planet...

Welcome to charming and strange world of the CERN research centre, home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – and the subject of a lecture by its director general, professor Rolf-Dieter Heurer at the University of Cyprus on Thursday. 

The title of the lecture was “the LHC: Shedding light on the early universe". 

So, what is the LHC? And in the wake of last week’s news that CERN scientists had recorded neutrinos travelling faster than light- what can it teach us?

The LHC itself is a bit like a giant metal donut, 27 Km in circumference, buried 100 metres underground and staffed by around 3,000 scientists all seeking to unravel the mysteries of the universe and its first moments.

It works by accelerating hadrons (tiny particles like protons or lead ions) to almost the speed of light, through super chilled (around - 271 degrees c) magnetised tubes.

These hadrons then smash into each other, generating high temperatures and, on a very tiny scale, conditions like those after the big bang.

It sounds spectacular, and although the machines are impressive, the action takes place in a space with the diameter close to that of a human hair, and lasts a tiny fraction of a second. 

This is where the camera comes in: to capture the moment, scientists use a camera with 100,000,000 sensors, and which is capable of taking 40 million pictures a second.

“This produces a tremendous amount of data” says Heurer “so the LHC have to filter out a few hundred good events, record them on tape and then analyse them."

Around 15 petabytes (15 quadrillion bytes) of data are produced each year - enough to make a 20 km high CD tower - "and that’s without the cases." Heuer says.

This data is beamed to around 140 centres around the globe - including Cyprus - in order to be analysed.

A reasonable question at this point might be... why?

Well, the main goal of the exercise - CERN’s mission, as Heurer says: "Is to understand the microcosm and the early universe. Particle physics will change our view of the universe.”

But for Heuer, and no doubt the many collaborators on the project, CERN is about something bigger: “I think Cyprus and the Mediterranean is a very good area to address such questions because your philosophers started to think and all the progress in knowledge comes from addressing these questions.”

We certainly have a long way to go before we understand the universe, its age, size or even what it is made from. 

For example, current data suggests it is 13.75 billion years old, yet we can only go back so far, and even today, within our frame of reference, we can only observe about four per cent of it. 

At CERN, scientists are chiefly tackling four questions, namely; what is mass? Why is there no anti-matter left? What was matter in those first few moments and fourthly - what Heuer calls ‘science’s little embarrassment”, the fact we still don’t know what most of the universe is made of.

The generally accepted view is that, beyond the observable four per cent, it is a mix of dark energy and dark matter, neither of which is observable with current instruments.

To grasp the remaining 96 per cent, we have to change the frame of reference, and delve into the world of the very small and very fast: a world where time dilates, lengths contract and objects are recorded travelling faster than light.

Amidst the sea of images produced by CERN, scientists are seeking one thing that could hold the key to unravelling these mysteries: the Higgs Particle, or as it has been nicknamed, the “God Particle”.

Prevailing theory - the "Standard theory" says it exists and if found, (so Wikipedia tells me) it could resolve several theoretical inconsistencies. To date it has never been seen. 

“We know everything there is to know about the Higgs Particle, we just don’t know if it exists or not.” Says Heuer

The prediction is that one in 100,000,000 collisions will produce the Higgs Particle, and Heuer is confident that with the aid of the computer centres around the world, like the Cyprus Institute, its existence or non-existence will be determined by the end of 2012, paving the way for further discovery.

To non scientists, all this research may seem an obscure academic exercise, yet CERN’s work does benefit humanity in other ways.

For example, were it not for Einstein’s theory of relativity, global positioning systems would be crashing planes in the sea. CERNs work even has medical applications, and in time could produce safer methods of irradiating cancers.

But perhaps CERN’s greatest contribution to humanity is as an example of what can be achieved when people can set aside national and cultural differences and cooperate together on a single project.

With more than 10,000 scientists working together from more than 35 countries, not to mention 175 collaborating research departments around the world, the LHC is also a triumph of international collaboration.

As Heurer says, it is not only a scientific but a sociological experiment that not only aids understanding, but offers a training ground for future scientists and technologists: at any time there are, for example, some 3,000 PhD students at CERN.

So while time travel may never be possible, with ever increasing knowledge and a shining example of international cooperation, there is hope for a better future. As Heuer says: “The future is bright in a dark universe.”

Video: