When two persons quarrel, their strength and weakness are revealed. Their character is stripped bare. When the two countries make war, their military might come into the open. Hence, 'collision' reveals and exposes. In sub-atomic world, collisions are common.
Rutherford bombarded gold foil with alpha-particles (Helium) and discovered the presence of nucleus. Chadwick bombarded wax with protons and discovered neutrons. When the neutrons strike uranium atoms, it split up; releases energy; the atom bomb is born.
The large Hadron collider-LHC is a big machine situated below the french-Swiss border.
1. It is 27 km long circular tunnel.
2. It accelerate the particles up to the speed of light and make them collide.
3. The particles are steered by powerful magnets which weighs as much as five jumbo jets and can store enough energy to melt 18 tonnes of gold.
4. The particle detector is as tall as a seven-story building.
5. Collisions of particles occurs 600 million times a second.
By cranking up the magnetic strength, two opposing 'beams' of particle are accelerated towards one another. Making them collide head-on is no easy task. It is like firing two needles at one another from a distance 10 km..
6. It costs 8 billion dollars.
7. More than 8000 scientists from 60 different countries collaborate on its experiments.
One of the main objectives of building LHC is to confirm the existence of Higgs Boson - God's particle.
What is Higgs Boson?
It was easy to understand how an elephant, car or even a pen might have mass, as they are all made up of atoms. But where did an atom's mass come from? Remember, mass is the resistance given by the body, when it is accelerated and moved.
Physicist Peter Higgs realize that particles seem massive because they are in fact battling their way through a force field -the Higgs field - a bit like a celebrity trying to get through a crowd of photographers, who cram-in ever closer to get the best shot. The Higgs field is made up of subatomic particles called higgs bosons.
As a particle with no mass travels through space, Higgs bosons cluster around it. Hence Higgs bosons are responsible for a particle's mass. (Higgs bosons gives resistance to the particles motion). Different particles attract different numbers Higgs bosons, so that's why they have different masses.
confirmed:
At last, in 2012; the collisions in LHC confirmed the existence of Higgs bosons. On December 10, 2013, two of the physicists, peter Higgs and Francois Englert were awarded the Nobel prize in physics.
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