It's amazing to see how beautiful and complicated the Hadron Collider is!
"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument
near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France
about 100m 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 minuscule world deep within atoms to the
vastness of the Universe.
Two beams of subatomic particles called "hadrons" – either
protons or lead ions – travel in opposite directions inside the circular
accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists 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 then analyse the particles created in the collisions using special
detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC.
There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions. For decades, the Standard Model
of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of
understanding the fundamental laws of Nature, but it does not tell the
whole story. Only experimental data using the high energies reached by
the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek
confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream
beyond the paradigm."
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/03/time-machine-worlds-biggest-particle.html
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