PARTICLE ACCELERATORS / ATOM SMASHERS A particle accelerator (or atom smasher) is a device that uses electric fields to propel electrically-charged particles to high speeds in a defined direction. An ordinary CRT television set is also a simple form of accelerator. The LHC is the world's largest.
Beams of high-energy particles are useful for both fundamental and applied research in the sciences. For the most basic inquiries into the dynamics and structure of matter, space, and time, physicists seek the simplest kinds of interactions at the highest possible energies.
THE LHC
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy.
It is theorized that the collider will confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, the observation of which could explain how other elementary particles acquire properties such as mass.The LHC was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and lies underneath the Franco-Swiss border between the Jura Mountains and the Alps near Geneva, Switzerland.
Latest News : The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.
