In the heart of Europe, next to the border between France and Switzerland, near Geneva, is the research center of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). It is here that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was built - the largest experimental facility in the world for conducting research designed to prove or disprove the numerous scientific hypotheses that have arisen in theoretical physics in recent years.
The last construction work was completed here in November 2006, but the first official launch took place only in September 2008. Naturally, only part of the design capacity was used.
Death in a black hole
However, not everything in the operation of the device immediately went smoothly. Shortly after the launch of the collider, in September, an accident occurred that disabled it for a whole year. Many journalists were quick to declare the mystical reasons for the accident: supposedly higher powers would not tolerate interference in the holy of holies of nature - its microcosm. Nevertheless, the specialists of the institute calmly gave a completely earthly explanation to the failure - the wiring simply could not stand it.
This explanation did not suit the media representatives. Many of them, not having, however, sufficient grounds, predicted terrible consequences for the world if the tests at the collider continued. A real hysteria unfolded around the collider. Someone claimed that testing would open the door to a world of unexplored dark energy and dark matter that fills the vacuum of the universe. And this will lead to unpredictable consequences. Someone shouted that experiments would inevitably lead to the emergence of black holes, which, with an ever-increasing speed, would absorb first the institute itself, and then our entire planet. Nothing and no one will be saved, unless you run away from a black hole at a speed exceeding the speed of light. But, as you know, nothing on Earth can move at such a speed. Be that as it may, the scientists showed real courage,not succumbing to the warnings of amateurs, and nevertheless launched the collider.
Miracle tunnel
Promotional video:
The LHC is a real miracle of modern technology. Imagine a giant device of incredible complexity, located in a circle in an underground tunnel. Inside the pipes that make up the LHC, beams of charged particles move with tremendous speed in opposite directions. The tunnel is almost 27 kilometers long and is located at a depth of 50 to 175 meters, sloping towards the surface of the earth. The system includes accelerators that allow particles to accelerate to the speed required by researchers, magnets that hold the particle flows in the desired direction, and sensors that allow determining the location of particles and their characteristics.
Despite the microscopic size of the studied substance itself, everything in the LHC is striking in its scale. For example, detectors 25 meters high, the operating temperature of the magnets is -271 ° C, the energy consumption is equal to 10% of the total annual consumption of a small country, the fantastic speed of particle bunches, which allows 10,000 revolutions per second.
Protons and combinations of lead protons and neutrons, or heavy ions, are used as a working material. The particles move at an incredible speed, close to the speed of light, which without VAK would be possible only when they are heated to millions of degrees Celsius - under conditions close to the conditions for the emergence of the Universe. During the movement, the particles collide with each other and scatter in different directions, but in the form of quarks, which are tens of thousands of times smaller than protons. Therefore, the device was called a collider, from the English word collide - "to collide". True, quarks almost instantly combine into new particles - so quickly that scientists do not have time to consider them. However, this suits everyone, because studying the properties of new particles is quite enough in order to obtain data on the properties of quarks.
Riddles never get smaller
With the help of the VAK, scientists hope to obtain confirmation of many hypotheses. For example, there are still heated debates about what matter is made of, that is, everything that is around, including ourselves. Until recently, it was believed that the so-called theory of the Standard Model for the construction of the Universe has been thoroughly studied. However, scientists still have not received answers to all their questions. For example, they reflect on what is the nature of mass, how mass was formed after the Big Bang, which gave rise to space, how matter and antimatter arise, and why they do not get along with each other, what is dark energy and dark matter, where, how and why they arise.
At the same time, in recent years, new scientific hypotheses have appeared that go far beyond the Standard Model and try to answer these very questions. Well, for example, the famous string theory, according to which there are a huge number of other dimensions around us, which are twisted to such an extent that we simply do not even suspect about their existence. But whole worlds exist inside these thinnest strings. If this theory, thanks to the Higher Attestation Commission, finds its confirmation, then we may be able to find the answer to many mysteries of our history and modernity. Well, for example, why about 40,000 years ago suddenly disappeared Neanderthals, who until then many millennia quite peacefully coexisted on our planet together with human ancestors - Cro-Magnons. Or where UFOs appear in the sky above our heads,their movement violating all the known laws of physics, and where they disappear as suddenly as they appeared. And the ships drifting in the Bermuda Triangle in complete calm, but without a soul on board? And the famous Philadelphia Experiment? The list of mysterious phenomena associated with the appearance and disappearance of people and objects goes on and on.
By the way, during one of the experiments, scientists discovered that some of the protons on the way to the detector … just disappeared. That is, the matter has disappeared. Why isn't this a confirmation of string theory?
Magic bricks, or about the benefits of walking in the mountains
In addition, there is one more hitch in the Standard Model. It seems that scientists have got to the bottom of the smallest, so-called elementary particles that make up the universe. But no, it wasn't there! To put it simply, we all know from school physics lessons that any substance consists of molecules, molecules of atoms, and atoms, in turn, consist of even smaller particles - protons and neutrons, which are also called hadrons (hence the name - Hadron Collider), which in turn consist of quarks. But there is, it turns out, an even smaller particle - the boson, named after the famous Indian scientist Shatyendranath Bose, a member of the Royal Society of London, who suggested its existence in the middle of the last century.
Several decades later, Scottish theoretical physicist Peter W. Higgs, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, developed Bose's theory and in turn suggested that the boson converts a photon of a field into a particle of matter with mass. In other words, something comes out of nothing with the help of a boson.
So, the Higgs bosons should henceforth become the basis of the Standard Model, the very bricks from which any object of nature is built with the help of a magical force called supersymmetry by scientists. He is already called either "a particle of God", then a "cursed particle". And some jokers even dubbed it "boson" a bottle of champagne."
However, until now the existence of the boson has not been proven experimentally. Interestingly, the idea of the role of the boson in molecular processes came to Higgs while hiking in the mountains of Edinburgh. This is what fresh air combined with exercise means!
So, one of the goals of the WAK is just to confirm the existence of this very Higgs boson. Finding it for physicists is like finding the most important missing link in human evolution for anthropologists. I found it - and everything in the picture of the universe immediately falls into place. The last cell of the puzzle is closed. Be that as it may, in recent months, the Center's specialists have already made many discoveries, and even more, according to their forecasts, will be done very soon. For example, scientists have come close to confirming the existence of the mythical neutralino and are about to make a sensational discovery about the existence of dark matter.
We think they will succeed. We can only wish them good luck!
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №3. Author: Sergey Sukhanov