• Question: I was wondering what the basic structure of the LHC at CERN is like and how it works?

    Asked by to Deepak on 14 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Deepak Kar

      Deepak Kar answered on 14 Mar 2014:

      Good question!

      So very simply, LHC is 27 km long circular tunnel underground. Protons move around the tunnels as it pick up speed, finally reaching almost the speed of light. Huge superconducting magnets produce the magnetic field to speed up the protons. We have protons moving separately clockwise and anti-clock wise, and at four points inside the circle, we make the oppositely moving ones to come together and collide. We have huge detectors around that points to collect everything from the collisions and measure the energy, path of the particles coming out.

      Please leave a comment if you want me to explain more. I can go all day talking about LHC 😀

Comments

  • geims commented on :

    What kind of equipment do you use to measure when there are collisions and what do you measure for?

  • Photo: Deepak

    Deepak commented on :

    Sorry, did not see the comment over the weekend. Primarily there are two sets of “detectors” to measure what is coming out of the collisions, and the basic principle for both is quite simple. The “tracker” measures charged particles by observing their motion in a magnetic field. Depending on the charge and velocity of the particle, magnetic field will bend their path, and from that we can calculate the charge and velocity. Then there are “calorimeters”, which measures how much energy the particles carried. Calorimeters are made of materials which can slow down or absorb the particles, and knowing the material’s characteristics, how much energy the particle was carrying can be calculated.