Outside the Blur

The Modern Physics is based on discoveries made on the smallest scale. Particle accelerators are large machines which accelerate particles to huge energies. But they are not dangerous as it is believed because 1GeV represents just a thousandth part of the energy used by a mosquito on the fly. The energy is very concentrated to the particle scale which is 10^-15 meters or even less.

C.E.R.N. (European Organization for Nuclear Research, Centre Européene de Recherche Nucleaire on français) is one of the most advanced research facilities from the world which is investigating this small world. Scientists are hoping to recreate the conditions of Big Bang and study particles to understand our world.

Particles are accelerated to high energies and then are collided in an magnetic field, or what it is called a detector. High speed of about 99,999 % from the speed of light can be reached at this level.

The LHC – Large Hadron Collider is the ultimate synchrotron accelerator which permits accelerate particles (protons in our case) to an energy of 7 TeV. It has 27 km in circumference, circular shape and is buried 100 meters beneath the surface (91 meters in some areas).

ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) has 46 meters long and 25 meters in diameter, and has a weight about 7,000 tonnes.

I visited ATLAS in June 2006, and I made some photos that I present you here (some of them). We descended 100 m beneath to see one of the most advanced detectors from the world. I was very impressed by the dimensions of the structure and the amount of effort and technology invested in this huge detectors.

The adventure of ATLAS will begin on Wednesday and will search for the famous Higgs Boson, which is one of the biggest particles and the missing part from the Standard Model from physics.

I am inpatient to see the results of the experiments from CERN, particle physics is one of my passions and I consider that if we can technologically advance is because the new discoveries made in the domain of quantum mechanics and particle physics.

Higgs Boson is of course one of the mysteries of modern physics. I personally believe that it will not show up. In theory of Standard Model Higgs Boson represent the origin of mass, in other words, the mass of particles is due to Higgs Boson. But the energy of Higgs Boson is so big (it is considered to be in the order of TeV) that it is needed a very powerful accelerator to be found. This is why LHC was constructed and his principal goal is to find this elusive particle. But if the Higgs Boson is out of the range, it can be also missed.

Detectors serve as what the name is saying, as detectors. After particles are accelerated through the magnetic tunnel where they get the energy and the velocity, they are oriented in a detector, and crashed. In a particle experiment, if you smash for example protons with anti-protons will result a pleiade of particles and their weight and energy depend by the power and energy received from the accelerator. Accelerator is a very powerful microscope which operates beyond the limits of well known electronic microscopes.