The Big Bang at the LHC

Well, we are on our way.

Both beams of particles have been sent their wending ways, protons clockwise, anti-protons anti-clockwise (how appropriate!).

Today was just a fire-up test of the big machine, to prove that we could actually shine particles through the 1000+ steering magnets(dipoles) and the countless other focussing magnets (quadrupoles).

The proton stage this morning was actually done in half the time expected, with a corresponding timescale for the anti-protons.

We got them both up to 99.99% the speed of light. The goal, when all is working optimally, is 99.9999999 % the speed of light. That won't be until next March or April. That is also the time when the Black Hole Doosmdayers will emerge from the woodwork again

For myself, it was wonderful to see the actual beam on the screens in the control room of CMS. This project is older than I am !

Now that we know we can use it, tweaks will be made to refine the beam solid angle and it's centrality (which by today's results was pretty central anyway).

Here's the overview of the whole shebang. Protons one way, anti-protons the other way. This works because they are of opposite charge, but obey the same rule we learned in school : Fleming's Left Hand Rule.

The steering magnets do just that, they turn the beam in a circle (actually, the particles only describe arcs of circles whist under the influence of the magnets. Between the magnets, they run straight lines)

The reason why so much power is needed and why it is being shut down for Christmas is due to Einstein.

He said, the faster a particle goes, the heavier it gets. Newton said heavier things need bigger forces on them to change their trajectories (Newton's 1st Law), so we have to up the power of the magnets many times to cope with the increased mass.

The only way to do this and not blow a fuse is to have the magnets surrounded by superconducting coils. Superconductivity happens at very low temperatures, and what happens is so mysterious it could well be science fiction. An electrical current in a wire at those temperatures suffers no electrical resistance at all, and therefore no power loss.

This is what happens, our coils are superconducting, and once the current giving rise to the magnetic field is established, we can turn off the power. Of course, you don't get something for nothing, because now we have to provide power into maintaining the very cold temperature (colder than deep space).

That's how we steer the particles. To make the beam narrower and therefore more focussed, we use quadrupole magnets.

Recall that schoolboy magnets have two poles, north and south (they are the dipoles above). Quadrupoles have two norths and two south poles, and the magnetic field lines, unlike the dipoles which are straight, are curved, and they flatten the beam's solid angle into a thinner beam.

Dipoles steer, quadrupoles focus ( you can have octupoles and hexadecapoles with 8 and 16 poles respectively as well, but NOT decapoles (10 poles) or duodecapoles (12 poles))

So assuming the LHC is now fully operational in the Spring, what then? Well, we get the opposing beams to cross at 5 points around the ring, looking for where proton meets anti-proton, and using E = mc2, a maasive amount of energy is available to create new particles from the electromagnetic waves created. The energy available is so great, it had been labelled "The Big Bang" experiment.

And what is it we are looking for,exactly, the cry goes out?

Ever since physics began a very basic question has been asked. Exactly what determines each particles' mass (=weight). More specifically, why is a proton 936 units, a neutron 939 units, and an electron 0.511 of the same units? We know how to perform calculations with these numbers, but where do the actual numbers come FROM?

Nobody actually knows. However, Peter Higgs, a British Scientist proposed a gauge field (like an electromagnetic and gravity field) called the Higgs Field, which all particles move through and acquire mass from . All gauge fields have an associated carrier particle (electromagnetism has the photon, the strong force has the gluon, gravity has the graviton, and the weak force has the W and Z0, all of them Bosons (ie "spin" is integral))

The Higgs Boson would be the carrier of the Higgs field, and is so heavy that no accelerator has been powerful enough to produce one, until perhaps now.

THIS is the Holy Grail of Physics.

It is exciting because, if we DO find it (and we won't see it directly, it dies very quickly), we will know a lot more about physics, and if we DON'T find it , that means we do not quite understand what is happening yet, and a radical re-think will be in order.

Personally, I agree with Stephen Hawking, in that I am willing to bet it will not be found.