The Large Hadron Collider

All particles in the universe fall into two categories: Hadrons and Leptons. Leptons are fundamental particles including electrons, heavier muons, and very hard to detect neutrinos. Hadrons consist of quarks, which are subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge. They are split into two groups – Mesons and Baryons. Protons and neutrons are both baryons. Mesons can be Pions or Kaons.

Every particle has an antiparticle. For example, the antiparticle of a Proton is an Antiproton. When a particle meets its antiparticle, they annihilate one another, producing two photons of energy in the opposite directions to conserve momentum. These photons of energy can also change into a particle-antiparticle, during Pair production, if they have enough energy. Alternatively, electromagnetic waves are emitted when a charged particle loses energy, by being stopped, slowed down or made to change direction.

When two hadrons collide, they interact through the strong interaction, converting their rest energy and kinetic energy into new particles with the same amount of rest and kinetic energy in total. Energy, momentum, strangeness, baryon number, and lepton number, are all conserved in the reaction.

The Large Hadron Collider works on these basic principles. It allows us to discover more about particles and answer the fundamental questions of science. Located near Geneva, part of the European scientific Research base Cern, it is the biggest accelerator in the world. It has a ring shape and circumference of 27 kilometres, at a depth ranging from 50 to 175 metres underground. With a budget of £ 6.19 billion, it is one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever to be built.

It works by accelerating charged particles, boosting their kinetic energy at several places, to energies of more than 7000GeV. There are magnets to bend the path of the particles to keep them in the ring. Researchers hope that the data gathered by smashing particle beams together at ultra-high speed will help to solve questions about relativity, natural forces and dark matter.